


Scene 14

by CornflowerBlue (DayDaDahlias)



Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band)
Genre: Acting, Acting Major AU, Alcohol, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Theatre, Anxiety, Anxiety Attacks, Awkward Flirting, Denial of Feelings, Dirty Jokes, Drunk flirting, Endearing Asshole Characters, Enemies to Fake Lovers to Friends to Real Lovers, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Flirty Ashton Irwin, Hate to Love, Humor, I swtg this is written like a crack fic, M/M, Musical References, Oblivious Luke Hemmings, Performing Arts, Secret Relationship, Slut Ashton Irwin, Slut Buddies!!, Slut Calum Hood, Smut, So Many Scenes/Monologues, This Checks Every Trope Box tbh, Top Ashton Irwin, True Love, Unresolved Sexual Tension, or technically, that's right folks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-17 16:48:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 39,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29595783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DayDaDahlias/pseuds/CornflowerBlue
Summary: It's one of the first lessons you learn. There’s a difference between performing andacting.Actors are intellectuals; they’re poets with their expression and the way their voices hit the air. Performers, by comparison, are children, ignorant and too bright for their own good. No one wants to admit to being only a performer. If you’re anyone worth anything, you want to be an actor.And Luke is not an actor, but Ashton is.Or, the one where Luke hates Ashton but has to pretend to be in love with him for five months for his acting final except for the fact that maybe he isn't pretending anymore.
Relationships: (Past) Calum Hood/Ashton Irwin, Kaitlin “KayKay” Blaisdell/Sierra Deaton, Luke Hemmings/Ashton Irwin, Michael Clifford/Crystal Leigh, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Roy English/Calum Hood
Comments: 50
Kudos: 28





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi!! I want you all to know, this fic is not deep. She is not thought-provoking. She is not angsty. She is gay sex jokes, smut, terrible awkward flirting with some oblivious pining, and sexual tension sprinkled on the side. 
> 
> But, she was literally the most fun I've had writing a project!! I've always wanted to write a fic about acting/theatre and it was about time I tried my hand at an enemies-to-lovers and a fake dating au so I thought, _hey, why not mash 'em all together and call it a day?_
> 
> TL;DR: don’t expect much from this fic other than a good unwholesome time. 
> 
> Hope you have as much fun reading as I did writing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Exposition, Exposition, Exposition !!!

When Luke limps back to campus after Christmas break—wounded by the reprimand he received from his mother about his “self-destructive” plans for the future—the only thing on his mind is horsemint.

Reason being; the campus grounds are fucking covered in it, littering the corners of the sidewalk and bending up from the middle of the grass, and it drives him crazy that a gardener hasn’t taken care of it. 

But it’s fine, it’s fine; it’s not like he expected campus to be beautiful when he returned. It was never beautiful to begin with, and no matter what, it is better than home.

Besides, his mom’s yard has weeds too, and now the horsemint has made him think about his mother’s yard and his mother’s yard has made him think of home and home has made him think of his future and his future is based in acting and self destructive plans which has lead him to his new thought which is; lemonade.

So now, while Luke is limping across campus after Christmas break—oh, so wounded—he has two things on his mind, horsemint and a glass of lemonade. 

He’s thinking about a glass of lemonade because he’s thinking about how much he wants one right now and the fact that he didn’t get one from Ms. Thompson (his old High School drama teacher/director who lives in their neighborhood), who he usually gets a glass of lemonade from while he’s home, but this time neglected to do such. 

And, the moment Michael catches up to him, grinning brightly to offer a greeting after two weeks without having seen each other, the first thing Luke says to him is, “dude, I would kill for a glass of lemonade right now.”

Michael steps away and replies, “and a ‘welcome back’ to you too, Lukey.”

He falls in stride alongside Luke, frowning as he shifts his backpack on his shoulders. 

He mimics in a high pitched voice, “oh, hello, Mike, did you have a fun Christmas? Why thank you for asking, Luke, my Christmas was peachy and I can’t wait to start the new semester with you, my _best friend_ , in our shared Biochemistry class—”

“Okay,” Luke snorts, bumping his shoulder into Michael’s. “I get it; I’m sorry. Hello, happy to see you too. Do you think they have lemonade in the dining hall?”

“Yeah, if it’s open.” Michael rolls his eyes. “I forgot how one-tracked your mind is; what happened at home this time?”

“The same thing that always happens,” Luke replies in a grunt. He shoves his hands into his pockets as they make their way across the common area.

“Which means—” Michael waves his hand, looking as tired as he always does when they come back from breaks and Luke has to tell him what happened while he was away— “Mommy Dearest said what to you?”

Luke shrugs apathetically. “The usual. That I’m throwing my life away on a major that’s never going to serve me, blah blah blah. I’m not a good actor, blah blah blah. Why aren’t I a lawyer? I could be such a good lawyer.” 

“You?” Michael choruses. “A _lawyer_? God, where does Liz come up with this shit?”

“Beats me.” Luke grins. “But she has a point; I mean, I am a shit actor.”

“Luke,” Michael’s voice hedges on serious, and Luke knows he’s about to lecture him and try to console him and do the honorable friend thing that he does where he makes Luke try to feel better about himself and Luke simply isn’t in the mood for coddling so he cuts him off. 

“So what class are you most excited for this semester?” he announces in an attempt to change the subject. “I can tell you which one I’m _not_ looking forward to.”

“D’you notice that sometimes you ask me questions so you can answer them yourself?” Michael returns. 

Luke glances at him, cocking a brow. “Does that mean you don’t want me to tell you?” 

“No, of course I want you to tell me.” Michael swings his arms at his sides. “I live vicariously through your drama, we’ve talked about this.”

"That can’t be healthy for you.”

“Hey, you’re the one who’s throwing your life away by being a no-talent actor,” Michael points out and Luke snorts as he focuses back on the path, realizing that without thinking he has already steered them past the dining hall and is instead on the way to their dorms. Goddamn internal instinct fucking him over yet again.

 _Fuck it_ , he decides, _I’ll get my glass of lemonade another day_. 

“And on that note,” he tacks on, “the class I am most not looking forward to is, drum roll please—”

Michael drums on the front of pants with his palms as they walk.

“Scene Study and Technique!” Luke pumps a fist in the air. “Glory hallelujah!”

Michael lets out a mock cheer in chorus before he asks, “and do share with the class, Sir Hemmings, what makes this course so… how does one say… ah, yes, _shit_?”

“Not the course itself, actually,” Luke answers as they make their way towards their dorm, Luke basking in the feel of being on campus again, surrounded by the large, stout buildings and the bustle of other kids coming home from the holidays, “it’s the roster.”

“Oh.” Michael opens his mouth and lets out a sound of agreement. He’s half close to skipping. “What mortal enemies share this class with you?”

“Number one,” Luke says to his side, “Dale’s teaching it, who is apparently the hard-ass to end all hard-asses—”

“Love that for you.”

“And another person in the class is—” Luke takes a breath to steady the irritation that is already burning deep in his stomach like embers in a fire pit— “Ashton fucking Irwin. Because I’m me. And this is my life. So of course he is.”

Michael can’t hold back his scoff. “And, thus, the vendetta continues. Thought we left that behind in last semester.”

“We definitely did not,” Luke replies. “And it is not a vendetta.”

“Hmm.” Michael winks. “Feels a bit like a vendetta.”

“Just because I don’t like someone,” Luke explains to him, very professionally because his hatred is a very professional thing, “doesn’t mean I have a vendetta against them.”

It takes a beat before he tacks on, raising his chin to feel taller even though he is one of the tallest people on the goddamn campus. 

“Besides, it’s not like he’s even worth a vendetta.”

“There it is!” Michael lets out a raucous laugh and he shakes his head back and forth as though he cannot believe that Luke brought this up again, but _of course_ Luke’s brought it up again because he thought he was done with Ashton Irwin last semester and now suddenly he’s stuck in a Scene Study class with him for the second half of the year with no escape. 

Does Luke absolutely _despise_ Ashton Irwin? No he does not; that’s a common misconception. He doesn’t hate him down to his very core; he merely… doesn’t like him is all. But that’s because he has no reason _to_ like him. 

And he has plenty of reasons to _dis_ like Ashton Irwin. 

Number one, the man shouldn’t have gotten that lead role in _Bright Star_ sophomore year because Luke had a better range for it and obviously, would have been a better Billy. It’s common sense. He’d prepped for months for that role, gotten a vocal coach even, memorized the score, and then there comes Ashton Irwin, waltzing on into the theatre—hadn’t even read the script beforehand—and somehow wow-ed their director with his hazel eyes and charm. 

That was goddamn voodoo as far as Luke was concerned. Or, maybe blackmail. 

And number two, Ashton is too attractive to be as talented as he is. Feels like the day he was born, God was handing out freebies and that’s not fair.

Three, and final, Ashton seems a little too nice and a little too funny to be a good person. 

Luke knows red flags when he sees them and Ashton Irwin is _made_ of red flags.

“And to think,” Michael hums, “this is all because the poor bastard got the lead role sophomore year. If that hadn’t happened, you two could have been friends—” in a far off voice— “or perhaps in another life, even more.”

“Oh, bite me,” Luke says, shoving Michael playfully in the arm to get him to shut up and Michael laughs in pride, tripping off the path into the grass, his sneakers crunching down a pile of horsemint as he does and Luke is once again reminded of the fact that he never got his glass of lemonade. 

“All I’m saying is,” Michael begins as he bounces back onto the pavement, “you don’t have to hate him for something that happened a year and a half ago. Maybe this class’ll give you perspective or some dumb shit like that. Give you piece of mind and zen.”

Luke gives him a pointed look. “Michael, are you my best friend or not?”

“I am, if memory serves,” Michael replies, although somewhat regrettably, as if he is reconsidering the position. 

“And,” Luke says, “as my best friend, it is your understood duty and responsibility to hate who I hate on principle. Don’t use your ‘logic’ with me; Ashton Irwin is hateable.”

Michael rolls his eyes, and he can’t help but grin, reaching out to sling an arm over Luke’s shoulder as they make their way to their building, pulling him closer and kissing the top of his head. “Tell you what, Lukey; it’s good to have you back. Pointless vendetta and all.”

Luke gives him a smile from the corner of his eyes and considers informing Michael that it's definitely _not_ a pointless vendetta, but he forgoes the opportunity and agrees instead, “yeah. It’s good to be home.”

When they reach their building, Luke’s throat is still dry and craving citrus, and his boots noisily crunch a gathering of horsemint at the bottom of the stairs, but it’s _home_ , and that’s all Luke has on his mind.

***

There are rumors in the theatre department that Dale is the sort of teacher no one wants to have. Because he’s _good_. And, like any good director, if you’re not a good actor, he will tell you that you’re not a good actor and that’s why Luke is horrified.

Because he knows that Dale is going to see right through him. 

One of the first lessons you learn as a young theatre kid; there’s a difference between performing and _acting_. 

‘All actors are performers but not all performers are actors,’ Lorrie Thompson had told him over a glass of lemonade at her house back when he took acting lessons over the summer in High School. 

He remembers a cold glass in his hands and a rocking chair on the porch, Shakespeare read in a tone meant only for professionals. 

An actor’s vibrato. 

Actors are intellectuals, she had said; they’re poets with their expression and the way their voices hit the air. Performers, by comparison, are children, ignorant and too bright for their own good. No one wants to admit to being only a performer. 

If you’re anyone worth anything, you want to be an actor.

And Luke is positive that Dale will take one sharp look at him down the end of his nose and he will know—in a moment he will know—that Luke isn’t an actor; he’s a performer, and he’s far too shiny and doe-eyed to ever make it in the industry. 

He feels like an idiot when he walks into class on their first day, holding his backpack to his chest like a lifeline, seeing people sliding neatly into their chairs with the confidence of actors who _know_ they’re actors. 

And, of course he notices Ashton Irwin, the same as the others, reclining into his chair with an easy smile painted on his face. 

Luke makes an elective decision to not look at him too long (or the black jeans and long-sleeved sweater he’s wearing and the way his hair is messy like he didn’t even try to brush it this morning because, obviously, that doesn’t matter) and takes his own seat in the back of the auditorium, hoping that will alert Dale to the fact that he, in no world, wants to be noticed.

Ashton is sitting in the front row. He’s _made_ to be noticed. 

“Good morning!” a voice calls out within a few moments and Luke shoots his eyes to the doors of the room that are swinging closed behind a short man with red hair and, yep, that’s Taylor Dale. 

That’s the man that is about to ruin Luke’s miserable little life. 

All eyes sweep towards the front of the auditorium where Dale has planted himself and Luke keeps all his breath concentrated in the center of his chest, trying to console himself that he doesn’t even know Dale personally, he doesn’t even know if this class is going to be hell; it may be fun, he may be great, Dale may praise him every day of the week.

“Alright, let’s hop right into it!” Dale claps his hands and the sound reverberates through the auditorium.

Silence falls and he smiles at the row of chairs. 

“Welcome to Scene Study and Technique,” he begins. “My name is Taylor Dale, and I am not here to be your parent and I am certainly not here to be your friend. I am here to be your _teacher_ , and I can guarantee that when you leave this class, you will have a superior understanding of scene performance and partner chemistry. Through the semester, we’ll focus on working with ensembles, and playing off of others for optimal performance.”

Awesome. Luke is good with people. Okay… He’s good with Michael, at least, that’s something. 

Fuck. He needs to learn how to be good with people.

He starts jotting notes. _Learn how to be good with people_.

“And, your final grade in this class will be a scene between you and a partner,” Dale continues and he has started to pace across the front of the room’s floor, all eyes tracking him as he does such. “This scene will be developed over the course of the next five months. Partners will be assigned at the end of this week.”

The class blinks long, and slow, and steady altogether. 

A hand shoots up from the front row and Luke can’t help but scowl when the student’s voice meets the air. 

“What criteria will you be using to assign partners?” Ashton asks, lowering his hand back to his lap, and of course he’s the kind of bastard that uses words like ‘criteria.’ 

Dale gives a considerate hum. “Well, Mister…?” 

“Irwin,” Ashton fills in. 

“Mr. Irwin, yes.” Dale pauses, looking Ashton up and down for a brief moment. A hint of recognition passes his features. “You played, Billy, didn’t you? In _Bright Star_?”

Luke rolls his eyes so far back in his head he gives himself a headache.

“Yes sir, I did,” Ashton returns, fucking smug too, and Luke can see, even from the back of the class, the way that Ashton is beaming, a wide smile in place that is cushioned by deeply carved dimples. 

Dale hums and doesn’t say anything about his performance, which gives Luke the slightest bit of satisfaction. 

“Well, _Bright Star_ ,” Dale says, and Luke is delighted by the way it somewhat sounds like an insult, “if you would have let me finish my opening statement, you would have heard me say that partners will be assigned at the end of the week _based_ on who I think will work best together according to their respective acting styles.”

“How’ll you figure that out?” Ashton asks and Luke wants to whisper in his ear _stop talking, and listen_.

Dale turns on his heels to face Ashton again, a smidge of irritation in his gaze, and Luke thinks to himself that maybe this class won’t be so bad after all, if he gets to watch Ashton Irwin get his ass handed to him every day. 

“Monologues, Bright Star,” Dale returns in a sharp tone. “Monologues.”

The class leans forward collectively to hear the words. 

“You will all be performing two minute audition pieces over the course of this week,” Dale informs, louder this time, directed to all the seats facing him. “Next class period, we will start with last names A through F. And so on and so forth and on Friday, I will send you all an email with your scene partners for the next few months.”

A monologue. A fucking monologue? By Wednesday?

“Alright!” Dale says, raising his voice. “I’ll see you all tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” Ashton repeats, confused, before anyone can so much as react. “Sir, we still have an hour left.”

“Yes,” Dale agrees, “and I suggest you use that hour to find a monologue. Some of you have performances tomorrow.”

He looks up and smiles at the auditorium. 

“I’ll see you all at ten. Hopefully you impress me.”

Luke has never seen a class scramble to get out of a room faster in his life.

***

“Hey man, what’s—”

Michael’s voice drowns away as soon as he walks through the door to find Luke sitting on the floor at their coffee table, papers spread out frantically across the glass surface, his computer open in the middle of the mess, scrolling through his google drive at a desperate rate. 

“Oh god.” Michael cautiously enters the room, closing the door behind him like if it shuts too loud, it will send Luke into more of a decline. “Is this… Are we having a mental breakdown right now? Did I miss the memo?”

“No, no.” Luke waves his hand at him without looking up. “I’m fine; I need to find a monologue.”

“A monologue?” Michael repeats, dropping his backpack onto the ground beside the door. “For what?”

“For Scene Study,” Luke answers and when Michael makes an odd expression, he elaborates, “first assignment is to perform a monologue sometime this week—I’ll go Wednesday—and at the end, ‘based on our styles,’ or whatever, Dale is going to give us partners for us to work on a scene all semester.”

“The entire semester?” Michael repeats, coming to sit across from Luke at the table, pushing some papers out of the way to make room for his arms. “What if you don’t like your partner?”

“Then you don’t like your partner.” Luke picks a page off the tabletop from under Michael’s elbow to skim over the monologue printed out on it. “No one’s going to tell Dale if they don’t. You’ll have to suck it up.”

“Sounds like fun,” Michael scoffs and he cranes his neck to peer out over the sea of monologues Luke has littered their table with. His brow furrows in distaste. “How are you supposed to pick and memorize one of these by two days from now?”

“Oh, I already have all these memorized,” Luke answers and he almost laughs at the way Michael’s head snaps up, his jaw dropping. Luke shrugs through a snort. “I’m a performer, Mike. I have to have a repertoire.”

“You’re a freak, is what you are,” Michael mumbles, running his fingers over one of the pages. “How’re you gonna pick?”

“Well, I’m best at humor,” he answers thoughtfully, tapping a sheet with his index finger, “so I figure I’ll pick something humorous and contemporary. Maybe… ‘Elsewhere’? That’s about someone who kills their partner and unburies their body to talk to their corpse.”

Michael blinks. “That… sounds horrific.”

Luke hands over the piece of paper it is printed on and Michael reads it over with green irises, tracing every line as his eyes widen. 

“Oh, yeah, you should do it,” he decides within a minute, passing the paper back. “You’d play a great murderous housewife.”

“I wonder what Ashton will end up doing,” Luke mumbles as he closes his laptop, pushing his papers together into a feasible stack. “Probably a classic piece, or like a Shakespeare. If that’s not beneath his ‘talent.’ You should have heard him today in class. What a prick.”

Michael laughs, standing up. “Glad to see the vendetta is still intact.”

“It’s not a vendetta,” Luke reminds him as he tries to make the papers at least somewhat even. “Now c’mon, I need an audience. Tell me if you really believe I’d kill my husband.”

“I don’t need to see the monologue,” Michael jokes, helping Luke stand. “The way you talk about Ashton Irwin? I believe it.”

***

Luke has been acting for a long time. _Long_ long. ‘Long’ as in, when he was five he played a mouse in Cinderella and when he was seven, a cat in Snow White. He was born and _bred_ into acting.

But even now, after all those years, the anticipation and the nerves haven’t left him. It’s the same fear every fucking time. That he’ll forget his lines, deliver something off beat or with wrong inflection, or completely pass out in the middle of a performance. 

Before he goes on stage, after all this time, his jaw still clenches and he has to ball and un-ball his fists about twenty times at his sides to feel he even has a _chance_ of saying his lines correctly. Not that he’s ever messed up before… but he always could.

The lingering possibility is enough to fuel his fear and make his stomach churn.

Ashton Irwin, on the other hand (the current bane of Luke’s existence), doesn’t seem worried at all. But of course he doesn’t, because he’s Ashton Irwin and he played Billy in _Bright Star_. 

He’s reclined in his front row seat, currently watching the girl who’s performing (the monologue is from Shakespeare’s Richard III, Lady Ann Neville, and she is _butchering_ it) with a sort of uninterested gaze, but whenever her inflection hitches, he’ll raise his brows like he’s shocked.

He doesn’t have a very good poker face—not that many actors do—and will make odd grimaces and stifle laughter whenever she does something particularly awful. 

Luke reminds himself that when he goes to perform in front of the class, she should not look at Ashton Irwin in the front row because no matter how well he is doing, Ashton will make him feel like he’s doing it all wrong. 

The girl finishes her piece and smiles nervously over at Dale, who is sitting in the corner of the room, jotting down notes onto a pad of paper.

Without so much as peering up at her, he says, “maybe next time, Ms. Sinclair, actually understand the piece before you perform it, hm? Sit down.”

The girl’s features fall and she doesn’t whisper a single word as she rushes to her seat. 

Luke’s hands are starting to sweat as he watches her hurry away. He’s reciting his monologue over and over again in his head, trying to make sure he truly has it memorized.

> CELIA. Well, I dug you up because I wanted to play with you. Oh, what did I do? I knew I would regret it but I did it anyway, didn’t I? Oh, what did I do?

What if he gets on stage and chokes? He may choke. What if he chokes and Ashton Irwin is in the front row and laughs at him for choking? God forbid. What if Ashton Irwin—

“Mr. Hemmings.”

Luke feels his body twitch. 

Dale repeats, “Mr. Hemmings, the floor is yours.”

Luke’s body carries him to the center of the stage; his brain is not part of the equation. His fingers are playing with the bottom edge of his shirt behind his back so no one can see. His mouth forms the words, “Good morning. My name is Luke Hemmings and I’ll be performing ‘Elsewhere’ by Adam Szymkowicz.”

He pronounced the name wrong and he knows it.

“Alright. Whenever you’re ready Mr. Hemmings.” Dale’s eyes are on his paper, continuing to write notes here and there. Luke doesn’t know if that should scare him more than it already does.

He takes in one shuddering breath. Tries to memorize the way the lights feel on his face and he thinks to himself, _spotlight. Spotlight, spotlight. This is where you belong. Act like it_. 

He’s a ditz in real life, he’ll be the first to admit it, and he lacks basic common sense on too many occasions, and he gets angry and sad too fast, and he’s half convinced he loves too hard, but on stage…? 

On stage, he’s bigger than life. He knows he can be. 

He falls to his knees with a loud thud and Dale’s eyes jerk up from his paper at the sound and the sudden movement.

Luke imagines, as he runs his hands over it, that the wooden floor is an unburied grave with a coffin open on it’s side, dirt soiling everything beneath him. Uneven weeds protruding from the ground, horsemint and all. And he begins, the words rushing to him in a continuous stream, “ _Well, I dug you up because I wanted to play with you—_ ” 

As he speaks, he recalls everything Ms. Thompson had told him when he performed the piece in his Senior year of High School for Showcase. 

‘Slow down,’ she had said, ‘Don’t go too fast now; you’ll ruin the pace.’ 

Emphasis on loneliness. Put pressure on that line. That line deserves to be crushed. 

_He would have left you anyway_.

All the while, as his mouth is pushing out the words on instinct alone, and his hands are moving over an imaginary grave of their own accord because they know they ought to, he can see Ashton Irwin in the front row from the corner of his eyes, head tilted to the side, as if he’s curious. 

He doesn’t try to stifle his laughter or pull any sort of frown, and that makes Luke feel better for a split second, before he reminds himself that there’s no reason he should be seeking Ashton Irwin’s approval. 

When he finishes the monologue, sitting back on his knees, admiring the ground where his mind has made up a coffin, by saying, “ _just let me look at you_ ,” he feels as though it was over before he even began it. 

But that’s how acting usually feels for him. One blinding high, one brilliant flash of spotlight, an ache in his stomach, and then it’s over and there are roses in his hand and claps on his back and ‘job well done’s whispered in his ears.

He finally remembers to breathe again, glancing up at Dale, who has his pencil momentarily paused in his hand. 

“That was…” Dale makes a thoughtful sound and Luke bites down hard on the inside of his lip. “Not bad.”

Luke exhales in relief. 

“But your eyes are blank.”

He stops.

“Your delivery is fine, your movements are correct, but… you lack true depth, Mr. Hemmings. There’s nothing behind your eyes.” Dale looks back at his paper and scribbles something down, no longer interested in Luke or the way his confidence is seeping out of him and onto the stage floor, disappearing from his body. “Next.” 

Luke sits on his knees in the middle of the stage, frozen.

Dale repeats, louder, “Next.”

And Luke suddenly remembers that he is sitting in front of an entire audience of his peers like a fucking idiot, rooted to the spot on his knees, breathing hard, horror stricken. He hurries to get off the floor, nearly tripping in the process, as he finds his way back to the seats.

His hands are shaking. 

_There’s nothing behind your eyes_. 

He feels nauseous. He knew it. Dale saw right through him. He’s a performer; he’s not an actor. 

His mind is racing in panicked circles and the only thing that makes them stop is when he hears footsteps on the wood floor and Ashton’s voice announce, “I’m Ashton Irwin and I’ll be doing the tuba monologue from _Mr. Deeds Goes to Town_.”

“Does the piece have a name?” Dale asks, looking nothing but bothered by Ashton’s mere existence. 

Ashton smiles at him and it’s infuriating. That smile is infuriating. “Yeah. I called it the tuba monologue.” 

Dale doesn’t say anything else but the way he writes something into his notebook with a hard hand has to mean _I am going to flunk you, Ashton Irwin. I’m going to make your life Hell and I’m going to enjoy it._

“Alright, Bright Star,” Dale says, stiff. “Whenever you think it’s best for you.”

Ashton gives his head a small tilt as thanks. He turns around so his back faces the audience and Luke thinks to himself, _God what a showoff; what’s he gonna do? Break into a dance? He’s not in a boyband. Dramatic ass—_

“ _About my playing the tuba_ —” Ashton turns around, and it’s so sudden that Luke jumps in his chair. Ashton continues, laughing as he moves and wow… He’s different. 

In those thirty seconds between when he turned away and turned back around, he somehow changed. Because _Ashton_ doesn’t move like this character is moving. Halting. Unnerved. With hesitation. 

Ashton presses on another laugh that doesn’t even sound like it’s his own. 

He says the next line, swaying back on his heels, “ _Seems an awful lotta fuss has been made about that. Listen_ —” he shakes his head— “ _if a man’s crazy, just because he plays the tuba… then somebody oughta do something about it because there’s an awful lotta tuba players just running around loose_.”

He’s so natural in the way he moves. Luke doesn’t see him search his brain for the lines. Doesn’t see him regret any decisions he makes. Ashton acts like… He acts like a _person_. And Luke hates to admit it, but he’s enamored of the way Ashton delivers the piece, so easy, spellbinding, like he’s simply speaking and none of it’s for show. 

“ _Course, I don’t see the harm in it_!” Ashton tries, and he’s speaking directly to Dale now, who is not looking at his paper anymore but up at Ashton and Luke knows he’s enamored too. Everyone in the room is. “ _I play mine whenever I wanna concentrate._ ”

It hits Luke though, a moment later, that he should not be so enthralled because it’s _Ashton Irwin_ and Ashton Irwin stole a role from him sophomore year that he deserved, by dammit, so he is not about to applaud him. He won’t do it. He has dignity. 

He drags his eyes away from Ashton’s performance and chooses to face the wall out of spite. Granted, he can still hear Ashton’s voice flowing from the center of the stage all the way into his ears and his brain, smooth like molasses, bitter like lemonade, extraordinary human. 

He talks so… believably. 

“ _So you see_ ,” Ashton says after his two minutes of truth, the ending of the piece, “ _everybody does silly things to help them think… I play the tuba_.”

The class holds their breath (like they want to clap their hands but know they shouldn’t) and within a moment, Ashton has switched back into himself, confident and cocky and _enraging_ , grinning at Dale while folding his arms over his chest. 

Luke hopes Dale tells him he’s a no-talent douche. It would be a lie, yes, but that doesn’t stop Luke from wanting it. 

“Hm.” Dale checks his notes; flips a page. He eyes Ashton up again and Ashton grins in that obnoxious way he does that makes Luke want to scream. “Mhm… That was good, Bright Star. Delivery was a little fast. But good.”

“Thank you, sir,” Ashton says, and he joins his hands together and bows them to Dale before he walks away to his seat again. God, he oozes nerve. Poise. Trust in his own body to do what he wants. He’s not a performer by any stretch. 

Ashton Irwin is a fucking _actor_. 

And Luke loathes him for it.

***

“So, how’d it go?” Michael wonders when Luke leaves the classroom, having been waiting in the hall so they can walk to lunch together. Luke stalks right past him and Michael snorts. “That good, huh?”

“I can’t talk.” Luke raises a hand. “I’ll become violent.”

Michael laughs aloud as he jogs to catch up, fixing his hands into his back pockets so his elbow bows out and bumps Luke in the back. He lowers his voice, enticed by Luke’s fury. “What’d Ashton do? Did he look at you wrong? Breathe your air too loudly? Maybe he existed in your general vicinity and that was too much.”

“No,” Luke hisses to his side through clenched teeth. “He was good.”

“Good?” Michael repeats, expression trading itself to bewilderment. 

Luke nods and he knows he has absolute fear concentrated in his eyes. “He was so fucking good, Mike.”

Michael pauses. “And you?”

“Botched it.” Luke presses his fingers to his forehead to will away the headache that is clawing up his insides. “Holy shit, I botched it. I was lifeless. I was terrible. My eyes were blank. I might as well have let a mannequin do the monologue.”

“Now you’re being dramatic,” Michael says, and yes, Luke is being dramatic, but that isn’t stopping him from going into a spiral, pressing both his hands to his forehead now to hold back his hair as he fumbles through the words. 

“I can’t believe I just did that,” he whispers, “I can’t believe how shit that went, I—”

“Hey, it wasn’t that bad.”

Michael and Luke snap their heads to where Ashton is strolling by them, backpack hung limply off one shoulder. He flashes Luke a wink that makes Luke grip his hair into bigger fistfuls, digging his fingers into his skull. 

“Don’t worry, Hemmings,” Ashton says as he passes, “You’ve got promise.”

Michael watches him walk by, like he’s taking time and consideration to memorize the backs of Ashton’s jeans and jacket like someone memorizes a license plate on a stolen car, before he asks, “Was that a compliment or a _brilliant_ insult?”

“I’m going back to the dorm,” Luke decides, turning down the hall in the opposite direction, already trying to escape Michael, Ashton, and the impending anxiety attack he is about to have. 

“Hey, no!” Michael catches him by the arm, forcing him to stay. “You can’t leave me; you promised you’d buy me a smoothie. And you can’t skip lunch, skinny legs. I don’t care if I have to carry your lame ass, c’mon.”

“I hate existence,” Luke moans as Michael tugs him down the hall, hanging his arm around Luke’s shoulder.

“Yeah, we all do,” Michael replies, “You’re not special.”

And he’s not. 

He’s just another performer with blank eyes.

***

It’s Friday afternoon; everyone in the class has performed their respective monologues (some better than others, and all definitely better than Luke’s) and Luke is sat at his computer in his dorm room, hovering over his email, refreshing his inbox every five seconds because he needs to know _now_.

“Is this what you’re gonna be like all semester?” Michael asks as he opens the door on his way to his last class of the day.

Luke presses the refresh button. “Probably.”

Michael lets out a huff. “I’ll be back in two hours, okay? Text me when you find out.”

“Uh-huh.” Luke checks his inbox again. “Will do.”

“Alright. See you later, Lukey,” Michael says in a smile as he leaves and Luke grunts as a form of response. The door closes behind him and Luke presses his refresh button twice more to make sure he didn’t miss anything. 

He’s driving himself crazy and he knows that, but this is a big deal. A semester long partnership? A final scene? The fact that Luke is a terrible actor and is throwing his life away? He’s allowed to drive himself crazy for the time being. 

Besides, he’ll be fine in about a week when his brain decides to work right again. But now? Right now he is allowed to spiral. 

His computer lets out a ding and he scrambles to see what has changed, fingers hovering over his keyboard. 

**Inbox (1)**

He lets out a sharp breath. “Holy shit.”

> **From** : tjdale@ltm.edu  
>  ^ _to me_
> 
> **Subject** : Semester Scene Partners Assignment
> 
> _Class,_
> 
> _I’ve had the pleasure to see a plethora of performances this week (some better than others, but this class should improve that) and after much deliberation on my part, I have compiled a list of partners for the end of semester’s final scene._
> 
> _Scenes will be cited beside partner names and I expect you all to start reading up and memorizing by the end of this month. There were many reasons I chose partners as I did, and I chose these specific scenes because_  
> 

“Yeah, yeah, that’s great,” Luke says aloud, eyes darting wildly over the email, “just tell me who I’m stuck with. And please God don’t let it be—”

> _Ashton Irwin as FELIX & Luke Hemmings as NED,_ The Normal Heart _(Kramer 14; Act 2)_  
> 

Luke swears his heart stops beating. He knows it has.

It’s sitting at the base of his stomach, having fallen right through his chest, and he thinks in a panic that it has to be a mistake, surely Dale has mistyped something, or this is a sick joke pinned on him by God, but he scrolls down to the bottom of the email and…

> _Thank you. Have a nice weekend._  
>  __  
>  Taylor Dale  
>  Chair, Theatre Department  
>  p: 800-278-1733  
>  e: tjdale@ltm.edu  
>  w: https://www.theatricsdept.ltm.edu  
> 

That’s it.

That’s fucking it.

“Ashton _Irwin_?” He repeats in a hiss, his breath catching in his throat.

Yep. He’s definitely allowed to have an anxiety attack now.

***

Luke is not an actor.

He’s in acting classes, sure, and has been since he was young. He’s read the textbooks a hundred times over. Watched films with a careful eye. Taken those private lessons instead of having summer camp like a normal kid. Spent every one of his free periods in Ms. Thompson’s classroom. Stayed at her house on the weekends, listening to Shakespeare, and Ruhl, and Wilde. 

And, still—after all those efforts—he can’t cross the necessary bridge from performance into true _acting_. 

He’s too much of a child, he keeps telling himself; that’s what it is. He’s too shiny eyed and bouncy and far too bright to ever hope to be an actor. 

And that is why he’s currently curled up in the corner of his dorm bathroom, arms wrapped around his legs and chin tucked between his knees, trying to keep himself from crying over the fact that his acting final is in scene work and he is meant to do a scene that requires _acting_ with Ashton Irwin, who is a capital A _Actor_. 

Luke isn’t an actor. Luke is a child. 

“Luke!” Michael’s voice rings out from the other side of the door, muffled through the wood. “Listen, I respect an existential crisis as much as the next guy but please for the love of fuck get out of the bathroom. You’ve been in there for half an hour and I have to _piss_.”

Except that Luke is planning on never leaving the bathroom ever again; he’s made it his new home. He plans to live there for the rest of his days and die old, huddled in the bottom of the shower, waiting to be washed down the drain like a piece of lint. 

“Luke!” Michael shouts. “I swear to God if you’re doing something stupid in there!”

“I’m not doing anything stupid!” Luke shouts back, wiping at the corner of his eyes. “Leave me alone! I’m having a moment!”

“You’re having several fucking moments is what you’re having!” Michael says to the door. “Meanwhile, my bladder is close to combusting. Give me five minutes in there, man, and then you can go back to crying about your arch nemesis.”

In an instant, Luke’s plans of living in the bathroom are forgotten and he is off his ass and on his feet, crossing the yard between the toilet and the door to rip it open, baring his teeth at Michael. “He’s not a nemesis; he’s a douche.”

“Finally,” Michael says, shoving past Luke to get into the bathroom. “I was worried you’d died.”

“Obviously not.” Luke walks into the hallway, facing away from Michael who is grappling to get his fly down. “You didn’t sound too concerned.”

“It’s _you_ ,” Michael reminds, “of course I wasn’t concerned.”

Luke scowls. 

“You’re a fucking drama queen, Luke, I mean _c’mon_.” Michael lets out a laugh and Luke hears the sink start to run. “You hate this bastard and you take this shit way too seriously. And now you’re saddled with the guy. Honestly, at this point, it’s kinda funny.”

“It’s not funny,” Luke says, and his eyes have to be bloodshot. “And it’s not that. He’s _good_.”

“And so are you,” Michael begins with a heavy sigh. “Lukey, you’re killing yourself by trying to make yourself better at something you’re already good at.”

“But I’m not good at it, that’s the thing,” Luke iterates, tucking his hands into his pockets while Michael grabs a towel to dry his own. “There’s something missing.”

Michael gives him a knowing look over his shoulder as he hangs the towel back up. “Luke,” he offers carefully, like he’s trying to talk him off a ledge, “you’re the best actor I know.”

“I’m the only one you know,” Luke corrects, stubbing his toe into the floorboards.

The two of them have started walking down the hall from the bathroom to the half-kitchen, Michael shaking his head to himself as he does so, obviously fed up with Luke’s train of thought as he so often is. 

Luke starts again, despite the whine of protest Michael lets out, “Besides, I’m not even a real actor yet, and now I’ve got this stupid goddamn scene to do with fucking _Ashton Irwin_ like that’s supposed to help anything—”

Michael stifles a laugh as he reaches the cabinets, placing his hand on one for support like the conversion topic is about to knock him over. He tries, “Luke—”

“Here’s my thing,” Luke starts, raising his hands, completely ready to complain about this again, even though he already screamed over the phone to Michael two hours ago when he first opened the email. He’s had his cry in the bathroom. He is more than ready to go over it again. 

Michael says, glancing over his shoulder, “you’re not serious.”

“I’m not saying that he’s a bad guy!” Luke tries, walking to the kitchen table.

“That’s because he’s _not_ a bad guy.”

“Sure he’s not a bad guy!” Luke agrees nodding. Michael looks briefly surprised that Luke agreed with him, hovering over the mug he’s about to get from the cupboard when Luke tacks on, “but there’s no way he’s a _good_ guy.”

“Motherfucker!” Michael exclaims, running a hand back through his hair, just to get a grip on something. “You literally don’t know this man. You’re delusional.”

“I literally don’t _need_ to know him,” Luke returns, hopping up onto the kitchen table to sit on it, “he doesn’t seem like a good guy to me. Didn’t you see the way he talked to me in the hallway? That was… That was intimidation or something. Like he _knew_.”

“That was not intimidation, it was casual interaction. In what ways, does he not seem like a good guy?” Michael argues. “Granted, I don’t have any classes with him. And, yeah, he seems a little egotistical, I’ll give you that—”

Luke lets out a huff. 

“And he’s definitely too hot for his own good, but when you’re _that_ —I think you have the right to be a bit up your own ass.” Michael cuts himself off with a snort, giving Luke a wicked smirk. “But I guess you wish he was a little up someone else’s, hm?”

He bounces his eyebrows and Luke can’t help making a disgusted sound at the implication, which is certainly supported by no actual evidence. In no world, does Luke want Ashton Irwin up his ass. 

Luke says, “I would rather die.”

Michael retrieves his mug. “Like I said. You’re a fucking drama queen.”

Luke can’t believe this is happening to him. Thirty people in that class. Thirty. And Dale gives him the only one he can’t stand. 

“Name one time you have ever had a real conversation with this guy,” Michael says, raising a brow as he moves to the coffee maker. “It might not be that bad. You’ve never worked with him once before; you don’t know that it’s going to be awful. What if he’s actually super nice?” 

Luke grumbles, “I don’t need to have talked to him. I’ve seen him act. He’s a little fucking bitch.”

Because no one that talented can be nice.

Michael laughs to himself before he says to his cup, quietly, “This is hilarious.”

“It’s definitely not!” Luke whines, throwing his head back to look at the popcorn ceiling of their kitchen, “He’s so fucking… ah! And I have to do a scene with him for the next five months!”

“ _I_ think,” Michael says evenly, turning to face Luke, “this scene between you two is gonna be a great experience. Maybe, after working with him, you’ll see that Ashton isn’t a bad guy. And, hey, I’ll get a good laugh out of it all.”

“I didn’t say he was a bad guy.” Luke wipes his nose. “I said he wasn’t good.”

Michael turns off the coffee machine.

“He might not be a good guy,” he says while collecting his cup, “but he is a good _actor_. So I bet you could learn a thing or two.”

And Luke hates Michael so much for being right because watching Ashton talk about a tuba in class on Wednesday morning, speaking like he was living, breathing human being and not reciting lines…? 

Luke has never felt less talented in his life. 

How the hell is he supposed to do a scene with the man? He’ll look like a child in comparison. 

His brightness will be blinding.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inciting Incident, Inciting Incident, Inciting Incident !!!

Michael seems to think the whole partner debacle is the funniest thing in the world. 

He actually called his goddamn girlfriend yesterday to tell her the situation in a fit of hearty giggles while sitting on the couch, which had made Luke want to physically throttle him because it is in _no way_ funny. And that’s why Luke has permanently banned him from mentioning it. 

He doesn’t want to hear about Ashton Irwin any more than is strictly necessary. 

Unfortunately, _now_ is strictly necessary. 

He’s leaving class at nine thirty on Thursday morning a week after partners have been assigned, eye-bags traced beneath blue eyes, stifling a yawn with his palm, and trying to blink blurry dots from his vision. 

All he can think about is Lorrie Thompson sitting on her front porch in his hometown, telling him over a glass of lemonade that it’s a good thing he’s a pretty boy because he probably wouldn’t make it in the industry otherwise. 

If she could see him now. Untalented and not even pretty any more. What a sham he turned out to be. 

“Hey, Hemmings,” a voice calls, the tell-tale sound of sneakers jogging to catch up with him on the carpet of the hallway. 

Luke turns to his side, expecting to find Michael (even though Michael should be in his statistics class right now), only to see Ashton fucking Irwin striding along the hall floor beside him, grin wide and dimples deep.

He’s got on jeans and a Nirvana t-shirt, a chain necklace draped across his chest that sways when he walks, and Luke can’t help thinking that he looks incredibly unprofessional.

(Luke neglects to own up to the fact that he, himself, is wearing a grey t-shirt with a hole in it and jeans that have mud on their cuffs, but—with all due respect—Luke isn’t talented and untalented people are allowed to look like shit.) 

“Oh, hi.” Luke looks him up and down once before he says—in a moment of defiance, just to put him in his place, “Sorry, what was your name again?”

Ashton lets out a gentle chuckle as they walk together and Luke hates that he likes the way it sounds. “Oh, trying to humble me a bit? I know you know my name, Hemmings, we’re literally scene partners.”

And there goes his dignity. Poof. It’s gone. Why did he think that was a good idea? God, that was such a fucking stupid idea. 

Luke goes red instantaneously, flushing all the way down to his neck, and he opens his mouth in alarm. He fumbles, turning to look away from Ashton and down the hall to avoid the way hazel eyes are mocking him, “I—uh—”

“It’s fine.” Ashton waves his hand with another laugh. It’s a very nice sound in actuality. Airy, bubbly. Luke knows few people with bubbly laughs like that. “I deserve to be humbled. Keeps my ego in check.” 

“Yeah, heh, right,” Luke mutters, adjusting his bag strap as they make their way to the front door. “So, did you need something?”

Ashton grins at him like Luke’s somehow made a joke, and he pushes open the door and holds it open for him. “Were you listening at all today?”

And honestly no, Luke wasn’t, because he has barely slept a wink in the last week. Biochemistry is kicking his ass and, on Thursdays, his Scene Study class starts at eight a.m. so he has to wake up early and make his way across campus without breakfast, and he is now regretting that he ever decided to take this godforsaken class in the first place because it has caused him nothing but grief and despair.

Ashton doesn’t wait for him to say any of that out loud, tacking on, “we’re supposed to meet up with our partners this weekend too go through our scene. Get a feel for it, y’know?”

 _Oh God_ , Luke’s thoughts whine, because that means Ashton Irwin time. One-on-one, no escape, concentrated _acting_ time with Ashton Irwin and Luke can’t even begin to think about that right now because his brain is beginning to convulse in his skull. 

The sunshine from the early morning is glaring into his eyes, causing him to squint.

He massages his temple. “Oh, okay. Yeah. I didn’t hear that.”

“Figured not.” Ashton is peering at him with a questioning expression, and his hazel eyes (which have gone a remarkable shade of green in the new light) do their brief rounds of Luke’s features and his disaster of an outfit before pulling back a tad with a gentle laugh. “You look like a wreck, Hemmings.”

“Yeah, thanks for pointing that out,” Luke bites, gripping his bag strap to avoid doing something stupid, like flipping Ashton off or calling him a name he shouldn’t in public. “It’s not a big deal. Just haven’t gotten a lot of sleep lately.”

“I feel that,” Ashton agrees and Luke doesn’t understand why he’s trying to have a normal conversation with him like they’re friends. 

They are not friends. 

They’ve never ever been friends. Hell, they’ve never even had a proper conversation until this moment so why is Ashton acting like they’re catching up like old buddies? It’s making Luke’s brain itch in the wrong damn way. 

Ashton offers, “Here, you want a hit?”

Luke looks down to find Ashton’s hand in front of his chest sporting a foam cup, and he frowns, slowing down his strides into smaller steps so he can ask, “What is this?”

“Liquid ecstasy,” Ashton answers without hesitation, “Really gives me that necessary ‘pep in my step’ for the rest of the day.”

Luke jerks his head up, eyes popping, as he exclaims, “it’s _what_?”

Ashton snorts, shaking his head. His dimples press into his cheeks with how big he’s smiling and Luke takes a split second to memorize them. “It’s coffee dumbass, from the new place in the dining hall. Honestly, not too bad, but I think they went a little overboard with the creamer. I like hazelnut, but not that much.”

He examines the plastic lid, swaying it in his hand for a moment, as though he’ll learn something from the outside of the foam cup.

Luke is staring at him in shock. He asks, “You’re trying to give me coffee?”

Ashton shrugs like it isn’t a big deal. “Unless you don’t want it.”

“I can’t take your coffee,” Luke says, bewildered, and he now realizes they have stopped in the middle of the path, forcing anyone who is walking towards them to divide and walk around, staring at each other, Luke in utter shock and Ashton with a relaxed grin drawn on his face. “It’s your coffee.”

“I can always get another coffee,” Ashton says, raising his brows. “My next class isn’t for two and a half hours and it looks like you’re in a rush, so I figured—” he shakes the coffee in Luke’s direction— “You’d need it more than me.”

“Are you…” Luke trails off, eyeing the cup, imagining the sweet taste of hazelnut creamer and the boost of caffeine. “Do I need to pay you for it?”

“No.” Ashton presses the coffee further to Luke, as if trying to force Luke to take it from him. “Consider it a gift. Scene partner to partner.”

Luke stares at him. This feels like a trick. He asks, skeptical, “Is it… poisoned?”

Ashton laughs like the question surprises him, his eyebrows pulling up and his dimples growing more pronounced. “No, it’s not _poisoned_. I’m not attempting to assassinate you via coffee. Listen, Hemmings, are you usually this difficult? Because I’ve got a brunch date with a friend in like twenty, so if you don’t want the—”

“No, I want it.” Luke snatches the coffee cup from Ashton’s hands and Ashton snorts as he does. “I want it. Thank you.”

Ashton shakes his head, fixing his honey colored hair from his eyes. He says, humor evident, “this is gonna be a fun five months with you, isn’t it?”

Luke clasps both his hands around the warm cup, holding it tight to his chest like he expects someone to snatch it away from him, pressing his fingernails into the exterior. He answers quietly, “it’s gonna be something, for sure.”

“Okay, well—” Ashton starts to backup, his sneakers tripping a bit on the asphalt, tilting his head to signify a goodbye— “I’ll see you this weekend, alright, Hemmings?”

“Yeah, uh…” Luke looks down at the coffee in his hands, still in awe of the interaction before he realizes, jerking his head up to find Ashton already a few yards away. He shouts, “Wait, where are we meeting?”

“My number’s on the cup,” Ashton calls back over his shoulder as he keeps walking, “Text me!”

Luke turns the cup around in his hands so the opposite side faces him to find that—indeed—a series of numbers are scrawled in thick black sharpie beneath the initials ‘A.i.’ on the side of the cup. 

“What the fuck?” he mumbles because how did Ashton do that? How had he known that Luke would have taken the coffee? Had he planned on—

Luke’s thoughts run in a stupid little circle, like a hamster on a wheel, and during their confused round-the-track race through his brain, he raises the cup absently to his mouth and takes a sip. 

He freezes, lips hovering on the rim, tugging the cup away to stare at the dried black numbers doodled on the side in absolute confusion because what a _weird_ coincidence this is. 

It’s his coffee order.

***

“You’re late,” Michael hisses from the corner of his mouth as Luke slips into his chair next to him. He pauses, seeing the cup that Luke is sliding onto the desk, his mouth pulling into a pout, and green eyes darting to meet Luke’s. “You didn’t get me one?”

“I didn’t get _me_ one,” Luke whispers as he tugs his heavy backpack into his lap, unzipping it in a rush to get his computer out and open to his notes. 

Michael, obviously confused while watching Luke scramble, grunts, “Huh?” 

“It’s Ashton’s.” Luke uses one hand to pull his laptop out and the other to turn the cup around to show Michael the evidence of Ashton’s rushed handwriting, the last number of the list smudged from where Luke’s thumb has been. 

Michael’s jaw drops, snatching the cup off the table in a second to look at it. “Holy—”

“Sh!” Luke hisses, raising a finger to his lips, because he definitely doesn’t want anyone to hear them. 

He sends a glance around the room before coming to the conclusion that no one cares about them or what they’re talking about. Which shouldn't be surprising, but is still sort of disappointing. They could be plotting a murder. They’re _not_ , but they could be.

He returns to Michael, “he accosted me in the hallway with it.”

Michael is busy turning the cup over in his hands and examining the numbers. He mumbles, “y’know, his handwriting’s not too bad.”

“He gave me his number and a coffee!” Luke insists. “What the hell is he playing at? This has to be some type of trick, right? Or a cruel joke to throw me off my game… It’s an intimidation tactic, I know it is.”

Michael gives him a concerned side eye. “Uh?”

“And now you think I’m crazy,” Luke huffs, sitting back in his chair.

Michael chuckles under his breath, setting the coffee back on the table. “Dude, I’ve always thought you were crazy. Now I think you’re mentally deficient.”

He pushes the coffee across the table back to Luke with two fingers, maintaining a cheeky smile. He truly glows in Luke’s pain, doesn’t he? What a good friend. 

“But, if you want me to feed into your delusion,” he admonishes, because he really is a good friend, “I could agree that it’s a _little_ too nice of something to do for someone on a first introduction, considering you two have never talked before.”

“Exactly!” Luke snaps his fingers. “It’s evil!”

“Okay.” Michael snorts, moving back to his laptop and glancing at the front of the room where their professor is berating on with her speech. “ _Evil_ seems a stretch—” 

“I can’t stand him.” Luke rests his chin on his palm, watching the lecture from the corner of his eyes. No words are actually making their way into his head, his thoughts are too busy remembering Ashton Irwin’s smile and his hazel eyes reflecting the sunlight. “Seriously, I don’t know what I’m gonna do for the next five months. And I have to meet with him this weekend to go over the scene.”

Michael snickers. “Can’t wait to hear about that one.”

Luke shifts his neck into his hunched shoulders, glaring down at the front of the room where their professor is babbling on. Apparently they have a test next Wednesday, which Luke will inevitably fail because his thoughts have been too preoccupied with Ashton to even entertain the idea of chemistry.

He mutters over the sound of her mantra, “I haven’t even read the fucking scene yet. God forbid I hate that too.”

“I hope it’s a sex scene,” Michael mutters with a smirk and Luke squawks in disgust loud enough that several eyes snap to him and one girl makes an aggressive shushing sound.

He hisses through clenched teeth, “I hope you die and worms eat your rotting corpse.”

“Why’re you a theatre major?” Michael asks while changing tabs on his computer from his notes to Twitter. “You should have been a poet.”

***

Ashton texts him to meet at the library on Friday afternoon and the entire walk to the building, Luke is seething in his skin, trying to think of how he can do this the quickest, and what sort of excuse he’s going to use to be able to leave early.

_Oh shit, I’m so sorry; I have to go, Ashton. I forgot I had a haircut scheduled for now. Uh, I have to leave, my dog has separation anxiety. I forgot to water my fake succulent and the plastic may wilt._

When he walks through the door, he spots Ashton almost immediately (because the man seems to glow like a beacon anywhere he is), propped against the checkout table and chatting up one of the librarians, a girl with lavender colored hair who seems to be more than charmed with his honey curls and dimpled smile like everyone else in the world. 

He says something to her, leaning over the counter so it’s whispered right beside her ear, and she lets out a laugh high pitched enough for Luke to hear across the room, pushing Ashton in the chest so he has to lean back. 

Her hand lingers on his shirt for a second longer than it needs to and she ends up fixing one of his buttons up before she finally pulls away. 

Luke figures they must be dating, with the way she adjusts his shirt and he chuckles to her, eyes glinting. Makes sense though; she’s beautiful, Ashton’s beautiful (Luke can admit that). 

Beautiful people usually fall in love together. It’s all about accepting the love you think you deserve, isn't it? And beauty deserves the best. 

If only Luke could find someone as equally inferior for himself.

“Uhm.” He clears his throat as he draws nearer to them, awkwardly adjusting his sleeve. “Hey.”

Ashton turns to see him and he straightens up in a second, pulling back from the girl and the counter, his smile drawing itself even wider and he’s quick to greet, motioning a hand to beckon Luke closer, “Hemmings, hey!”

Luke hovers at the end of the counter like a moron while the girl’s eyes skim him over and he can’t help but get the feeling that she doesn’t approve of his existence. 

Ashton doesn’t seem to notice, gesturing between the two of them (Luke really doesn’t know why he’s being introduced to one of Ashton’s friends like _they’re_ friends. Ashton seems to be annoyingly friendly) and saying, “KayKay, this is Luke Hemmings, my Scene Study partner I mentioned. Hemmings, this is KayKay; she’s my—” 

“Girlfriend,” Luke fills in, tipping his head to her and he doesn’t miss the way Ashton and the girl’s face both shift into disbelief, reeling back.

“Her?” Ashton exclaims at the same time KayKay points at him and barks, “ _Him_?”

That seems to offend Ashton and he whips his head to her, letting on a hurt expression, saying, “Oh, c’mon, don’t say it like that. We’d be a cute couple!”

KayKay says, this time directed to Luke over the counter with a shake of her head, “No, I am not dating Ash.” Directed to Ashton, menacing. “Nor will I _ever_ date him, just to make that perfectly clear.”

“Hey.” Ashton raises an eyebrow with a snicker. “The only reason you say that is because I’m not _trying_ to make you date me.”

“So you think you could convince me to?” KayKay asks with an easy smile playing on her lips and Ashton gives her a look that says ‘I _know_ I could’ and Luke feels even more awkward while standing there, like he’s listening in on a conversation he shouldn’t be listening in on. 

He doesn’t like intruding in on others’ lives or their love affairs. He has so few of his own these days that when presented with extra, his head starts to hurt.

“Shouldn’t we, uh, go over the scene?” he tries, tucking his thumbs into his pockets and Ashton’s attention finally turns back to him.

“Oh, shit, yeah!” Ashton says, giving himself an amiable tap on the side of the head. “Got distracted there. Let’s go sit over here, yeah? D’you bring your copy?”

“Yep.” Luke raises the manila folder he is carrying around tucked under his arm, and he follows Ashton to the empty table that’s been indicated, easing himself into the chair across from him as Ashton reclines back on his own. 

Anywhere he goes, he acts like he owns the place, doesn’t he?

Luke wonders if that’s confidence or arrogance, and what the difference is. It could be both. And upon further consideration, he can’t truly tell if he’s bothered by it all or if he’s impressed by the disregard. He’d give about anything to walk into a room and not worry he’s going to do something wrong by merely breathing in it.

Ashton grins, humming to himself while pulling his script out of his hoodie’s front pocket, revealing that one of the corners is half folded over, the edges of the paper crumpled, and Luke decides that he’s bothered. 

He’s definitely bothered by every little thing Ashton does, down to the way he chuckles under his breath as he flips the script open and starts thumbing apart the pages.

“Scene fourteen,” he sings out as he turns the papers. He peeks up at Luke from the book. “Big shoes to fill, eh? Definitely got our work cut out for us.”

Luke stops getting his own script open to stare at Ashton and his brain is doing that stupid little thing it does where it goes in the same little circle, over and over, trying to process what has just been said. He tries, “uh? We do?”

Ashton is prying two pages apart that seem to be stuck together with glue or syrup. “Well, _yeah_. Unless you think this is an easy scene? You’ll be about the most pig-headed actor in the world if you do, but, hey, to each their own, man.”

Luke is staring at him, blue eyes massive and mouth agape. 

Ashton pauses to smile at him curiously. “You haven’t read the scene, have you?” 

“Uh—” Luke doesn’t want to sound like an idiot, because he knows he should have read the scene by now but it feels like there hasn’t been enough hours in the day and he’s been so busy telling himself that he’s going to hate it that he hasn't given himself ample time to actually prove that he does hate it. “I… haven’t had enough time s’all.”

“That’s okay,” Ashton replies and it’s enough to make Luke’s eyebrows raise and his lips part softly because there should have been at least a little bit of ridicule. It’s deserved. “I honestly wouldn’t have read it either, but I already know the scene pretty well.”

“Really?” Luke asks, sending a glance to the script in Ashton’s hands that he has finally gotten to the right page, and Luke can see the stage directions right underneath the bold ‘SCENE 14.’

> INT. NED's apartment. FELIX is sitting on the floor. He has been eating junk food. NED comes in carrying a bag of groceries.

“Have you performed it before?” Luke asks, craning his neck to read Ashton’s script (even though he has his own). Realizing what he’s doing, Ashton shifts the script over so Luke can see it better.

“No,” Ashton answers, “Not with anyone but my mirror at least.”

“Best scene partner you can have,” Luke agrees under his breath and Ashton gets a laugh out of that. 

He tacks on, “You’d be surprised. My reflection is a total diva. Never gets his cues right.”

Luke can’t help but grin, because, _yeah, that was sorta funny_. Not super funny or anything, but it’s enough to pull a scoff from him before he realizes that it’s Ashton who’s making him laugh, and he has a sworn vendetta against Ashton, so what the fuck is this?

He leans away to get his own script, shaking off his smile. “So you’ve seen the play?”

Ashton laughs, this time not in humor but in disbelief. “You _haven’t_? It’s _The Normal_ fucking _Heart_.” He bobs his head. “By Larry Kramer? Published in 1985. Movie with Mark Ruffalo and Julia Roberts came out in 2014. It’s a goddamn masterpiece.” 

“Mark Ruffalo?” Luke asks, glancing up. “I like him.”

“Yeah, yeah, and Matt Bomer too, and Jonathon Groff.” Ashton seems eager to tell him about it. “You seriously haven’t seen it?”

Luke shakes his head and he hates that the smile is trying to return to his lips. It’s something about how Ashton’s hazel eyes are wide and he is squirming around in his seat as he tells Luke about the play, talking faster than he probably would in other circumstances. 

Ashton says, “It’s beautiful. If we’re gonna do this scene, you definitely have to watch it be performed. I mean, it’s fucking infamous.”

That catches Luke’s attention and he frowns, asking, “Infamous? Like… in a bad way?”

“Like in a this-is-a-hard-scene-to-do-justice kind of way.” Ashton sits back in his chair, folding his arms. “I mean, shit, Hemmings; the raw _emotion_ in this piece? I’ll make myself cry while doing it in the mirror, I swear to God.”

He causes himself to laugh again, as if imagining himself performing the monologue in front of the mirror, and now Luke is picturing it too; Ashton Irwin delivering some gorgeous, dramatic piece in front of his reflection, cheeks stained with tears and eyes tinted red at the corners, yelling about love and loss and all the inbetweens for no one but himself to hear. 

And now Luke is thinking about emotion—real, true emotion—and the fact that he is a _performer_ who could never hope to conjure that. 

He swallows down the forming lump in his throat as fear starts to work his intestines through its claws. 

“What—” He wets his lips to help him speak, fighting down his rising panic— “What’s the play about?”

“Oh.” Ashton sniffs, thoughtful on how to explain it. “So it’s set in 1980s New York. And, Ned—who is you, according to casting— is a homosexual rights adovate slash writer. He’s the one played by Mark Ruffalo. And he’s gay, right? And he’s with this guy named Felix—that’s me—and there’s a doctor named Emma—Julia Roberts—who—”

“I don’t need a cast list,” Luke says, and he hopes he doesn’t sound too snippy. “I want the plot.”

“It’s about the AIDs crisis,” Ashton returns bluntly.

“Oh.” Luke blinks. “ _Oh_.”

“I told you.” Ashton hums. “Shit’s raw.” 

“Wait, uh—” Luke’s brain is doing that frantic, circular thinking thing it does— “You said Felix was—”

“Ned’s boyfriend.” The way Ashton’s smile widens is coy. “The scene we’re doing is one of the most famous in the movie and—Geez, Hemmings, you have to see it. Reading it doesn’t do right by it.”

Luke’s brain is stuck on _boyfriend_ and the thought that he will have to act like he loves Ashton in their scene, or at least tolerates him, but he shakes his head and forces out, “I don’t know where to find—”

“I’ve got it on DVD,” Ashton says, because of course he does. “You could come over tomorrow or Sunday and we could give it a watch. It’d only take like two hours. All for research purposes, of course.”

Great. Yeah, no, that’s great. Movie night with Ashton Irwin. That’s exactly what Luke wants.

Luke doesn’t know how to get out of this. He’s free all weekend and he’s not a very good liar (which should have made it obvious to him that he shouldn’t have tried to become an actor; fuck his life and his choices). 

“I—” 

He glances around like someone will come by and save him but no one does and when he looks back, Ashton is smiling at him with hazel eyes and dimples, and really he’s not _that_ bad (even if he makes Luke’s blood boil by existing). 

Luke finds his mouth saying for him, “Yeah, uh, we could do Sunday afternoon, I guess.”

“Awesome.” Ashton stands, pushing his chair in and collecting his script. “I’ll text you the details, Hemmings. Can’t wait.”

“Yep,” Luke agrees, rubbing the back of his neck as Ashton begins to wander off. “Can’t wait.”

***

“I’m bummed it’s not a sex scene,” Michael says on Saturday, feet kicked up on their coffee table and plate balanced in his lap, picking at his pizza with a grimace. “Who ordered mushrooms? Sierra? You’re a monster.”

“I would have _loved_ to see you do a sex scene,” Sierra pipes up from the kitchen area where she is retrieving several beers from their fridge, ignoring Michael and bumping through the shelves, standing on her tip toes to reach the top. It makes her short shirt show off the top half of her stomach her high-waisted jeans don't and the bottom half of her bra. 

“Of course you would’ve. You perv,” Luke bites back, rolling his eyes. His pizza sits untouched on the table in front of him. He’s too busy thinking about acting to think about eating, arms hung over his knees as he stares at the plate. 

Crystal giggles, sweet and light. “Luke, I’m sure it’s not gonna be that bad. You’re overthinking this.”

“That’s what I said!” Michael agrees, slinging an arm around Crystal’s shoulder, who is sitting beside him on the couch, cuddling into his side. Luke is across from them, sitting on a pillow they have put on the floor (they seriously need to buy new chairs).

“Was yesterday _that_ bad?” Sierra walks back over to them, holding the necks of two beers in each hand, passing them around. 

Or, Luke thinks his is a beer until it actually lands in his lap and he realizes it’s a rootbeer. He looks up at her with an open mouth in shock and she kicks him gently in the thigh with the toe of her heel. 

“Don’t you give me that face, Lu, you know you’re a lightweight.”

“I could manage _one_ beer,” Luke grumbles, pouting as he angrily pops the cap of his rootbeer. 

“But if you had one, you’d want another,” she reminds as she sits down beside him on the other pillow they put out. “And after the second, you’d want a third.”

“When you give a mouse a cookie—” Michael chides knowingly and Luke flips him off. 

Crystal knocks Michael with her shoulder, tugging at the bottom of her skirt to cover more of her smooth legs when she shifts on the couch. “Don’t be mean to him.”

“No,” Luke raises his voice, returning to the previous question, directed at Sierra, “yesterday was not _that_ bad but I don’t know how I’m going to deal with a semester of it.”

“What’s so terrible about this guy anyway?” Crystal wonders, furrowing her brow in Luke’s direction. “Mikey’s said you don’t like him, but he never said why.”

“That’s because there isn’t a reason,” Sierra answers and Luke lets out an offended sound, pinching her in the side which makes her jump and exclaim, “ouch! You bitch!”

“So, here’s the deal with Ashton—” Michael stops himself, glancing at Luke— “Should we give him a fun code name for gossip now that you’re gonna be working with him? Like… I don’t know, Celery or something?”

“Why would we call him ‘celery’?” Sierra asks, forehead creasing while Crystal continues to look at Luke with confused blue eyes, fixing platinum blonde hair from her face. 

“Why do you hate him?” she asks. Luke likes how gently she says things. She’s a sweet girl and he wonders how Michael tricked her into falling in love with him.

Luke starts, “It’s hard to explain—”

“Because he got some dumb role in a play that Luke wanted sophomore year,” Michael butts in around a mouthful of pizza, “and now he’s _green_ with envy. Thus the moniker _celery_. Or, y’know, kale. Or lettuce. Could be lettuce. Lots of green things to choose from. I’m not picky.”

“We’re not nicknaming Ashton. And it wasn’t some dumb role,” Luke says, hedging on desperation. “It was Billy in _Bright Star_.”

“Oh, I like that play!” Sierra says with enthusiasm. “I saw it on campus! Man, you wanted that role? What for? Ashton was made to—”

“Don’t finish that sentence!” Michael puts his hands out, eyes widening. 

Sierra stares at him, taken aback, before she turns her head to see Luke scowling at her and she lets out a nervous chuckle, moving to put her long hair back in a messy bun so she can eat. “Shit, sorry about that, Lu. I was, uh, kidding?”

“So you hate him because of this one role?” Crystal breaks in, and Luke directs attention to her, flexing his fingers in his lap to keep himself from clenching his hand into a fist. “I don’t know how all this acting stuff works but… is that really his fault?”

“No,” Michael and Sierra say at the same time Luke says, “yes.”

“He didn’t cast himself,” Sierra tells Luke incredulously, and Michael takes the next moment to slurp at his beer while watching the exchange from the corner of his gaze. “How can you blame him?”

“Because he’s the one that got the role,” Luke replies like it should be obvious, because it should. Ashton was the one who barged into that audition late, script unmemorized, oozing talent. That’s his fault. How dare he have that spark that Luke doesn’t. How fucking dare he. 

“So you hate him because he’s better than you?” Crystal asks and Michael chokes on his beer. 

He hisses to his side, “ _Crystal_. You can’t speak the truth to this man, it’ll wreck him.”

Luke folds his arms. “He’s not _better_ than me.”

“But he was for _Bright Star_ ,” Sierra pipes in and Luke swears he's going to end her. She smiles innocently, and Luke hates that he likes her. “Sorry.”

“When did this night turn into an intervention?” Luke wonders aloud. “I thought we all agreed that my hatred of Ashton Irwin was completely acceptable last semester.”

“None of us agreed on that,” Crystal reminds. 

Sierra adds, “I said I thought it was concerning and bordering on hysteria.”

“I agreed with him,” Michael admits. “But that’s because as Luke’s best friend I have a certain duty to support vendettas, no matter how pointless and borderline psychotic.”

“It’s not a vendetta!” Luke all but shouts and that causes everyone to laugh slightly at him because there is nothing at this point to convince them it is anything but a vendetta. He massages his forehead, repeating quieter, “it is _not_ a vendetta.”

“So what is it?” Crystal asks. She is spinning her beer in her hand, having not yet taken a sip of it. 

Before Luke can open his mouth, Sierra has hummed, “sounds to me like it’s a crush.”

“A _what_!” Luke yells and Michael clamps a hand over his mouth so he doesn’t spray beer with how hard he’s laughing. “I do not have a fucking _crush_ on Ashton Irwin! I hate Ashton Irwin! What is wrong with you, you vile woman!”

“But you hate him because he’s a better actor than you,” Crystal fills in and Michael wheezes, rubbing at her shoulder lovingly.

He mutters to her, grinning, “Not helping, Crys.”

“I think you’re jealous of him,” Sierra says, flattening her lips and nodding her head to herself. “Yep. That’s definitely it. You’re jealous and you have a kindergarten crush. The kind where you want to pull Ashton’s pigtails on the playground. How adorable.”

“I can admit I’m jealous.” Luke raises a threatening finger. “But I don’t have a crush.”

And he doesn’t. Even a little bit. 

Okay, sure, does Ashton have a nice laugh? Objectively speaking, yes. And he’s good looking, without a doubt. Very easy on the eyes with those dimples and curls, and it turns out that he’s actually pretty decent in terms of humor and personality—which Luke wasn’t expecting—but he doesn’t have a crush on Ashton in any universe. 

“We’ll see about that after your little date tomorrow,” Michael says around his beer.

“It’s not a date,” Luke snaps, turning his head so fast he almost gets whiplash, “it’s for research only.”

“God, that sounds so sexy. _Research_. What are you two gonna research? Each other’s prost—?” Sierra begins to joke and, once again, Luke jabs her hard in the side. She yelps, hand flying to protect her stomach. “Ouch! Abuse! Friend abuse!”

“You guys don’t know what you’re talking about,” Luke snaps.

“We’re only teasing you, Lukey,” Michael says with a smile, reaching across the table to give him an affectionate push on the chest. “ _I_ know you don’t have a crush on him.”

“Thank you, Mike.” Luke sends Crystal and Sierra menacing glances. “Good to know I still have one loyal friend.”

“That’s unfair!” Crystal protests, although she’s smiling. “We’re plenty loyal! We just like pointing out other possibilities. To... give perspective.”

“It’s because they’re women; so dramatic. Y’just make mountains out of anthills, I swear,” Michael says, sipping his beer, and instantly Crystal and Sierra’s eyes dart to him. 

“What was that?” Sierra asks, narrowing her brown gaze, and Luke lets a smile play on his face. 

“Shouldn’t’ve said that, Mike,” he states as he raises his rootbeer to his lips. “Should _not_ have said that.”

“Hey now, I was kidding! I love women,” Michael protests, but the fiery female wrath in the room has already turned to him and Luke can relax for the rest of the night, basking in the ridicule of someone besides himself.

***

Ashton’s dorm has a place mat outside that reads ‘definitely not a trap door’ and while that is exactly what a trap door would say, Luke disbelieves that Ashton has the money to install one.

Still though, he’s hesitant when he treads on it with light footsteps, holding the manila folder with his script tight to his chest. 

He knocks twice, and then hears a clatter, a bark of laughter, and a muffled, unrecognizable voice call, ‘you didn’t say you were having someone over!’ and a returning voice that sounds like Ashton reply, ‘you never asked!’ and then another returning, ‘you could have fucking mentioned it; I’m not decent!’ and following that, there is some frantic shuffling and some more indistinct laughter from inside.

Within the next couple of seconds, the door pulls open and it’s Ashton leaning in the frame, a lopsided grin unbalanced on his features, dimples hugging its corners, hair fucked up in different directions like hands have been screwing through it, and he greets, out of breath and still half on the verge of laughter, “fuck Hemmings, your timing is impeccable.”

Luke shuffles his feet on the not-trap-door. “This is when you said to be here.”

Two thirty, on the dot.

“Yeah, I know.” Ashton chuckles, pulling the door open and offering Luke to come inside. “Just didn’t figure you’d actually be on time.”

“Why not?” Luke asks, walking inside and glancing around. 

He expects to find the owner of the other voice somewhere but there’s no one there. Granted, it’s obvious that someone has been here recently, if the messy couch and uncleaned table is anything to go by, two glasses of what looks like still fizzing soda sitting on the glass top. 

“Dunno.” Ashton shrugs, shutting the door behind him. “Guess I’m not used to people _respecting my time_.”

He says the final bit loudly, directed to one of the side rooms and Luke doesn’t miss the voice that shouts back, “Alright, fuck you, that was uncalled for!”

Ashton laughs, shaking his head, and walks to the coffee table so he can pick up one of the soda glasses. He pauses, holding it in his hand like he can’t remember if it’s his own or not before he ultimately seems to decide it doesn’t matter either way, and takes a hearty sip. 

“Nope,” he decides, licking at his lips, setting the drink back down and reaching for the other. 

“Who’s that?” Luke asks, nodding his head to the side room where the voice had come from. 

“Oh, that’s Cal,” Ashton says from the rim of the new soda before setting it back down. “My roommate.”

“And best friend, and _soulmate_ ,” the voice shouts back although this time it isn’t disembodied and is instead attached to an attractive young man making his way out of the bedroom, still fitting his shirt on over his head and flashing Luke a beaming smile off white teeth and plump lips. “Why’d you have to undersell me, Ash, all I've ever been is good to you.” 

Ashton rolls his eyes. “Hemmings, this is Calum. Cal, this is Hemmings, the scene partner I mentioned.”

Luke is really starting to dislike being introduced to Ashton’s friends as ‘Hemmings, the scene partner he mentioned.’ Granted, he doesn’t know what else he expects Ashton to call him. And it’s a hell of a lot better than how he would introduce Ashton to his friends, which would be ‘hey guys, you all know Ashton Irwin, the dude I’ve base-lessly hated for the last year on principle alone. Fun times! Let’s all forget that and play scrabble!’

“Right, right,” Calum agrees, bobbing his head, and Luke doesn’t miss the way he eyes him over, but then again, nothing about the way Calum does it is subtle, down to the way he wets his lips and smirks. “But you didn’t mention him being this god _damn_ fu—”

“Don’t you dare,” Ashton warns, raising a finger. “He’s off limits.”

“But I didn’t even get to—” Calum protests and Ashton makes a loud shushing sound, miming zipping his lips.

“I don’t wanna hear it. Off. _Limits_.”

Luke can’t help but freeze up, the sudden realization of what they’re talking about hitting him. He turns to Ashton in alarm and he can’t help but blurt, “are you telling him not to—”

“And here I was, about to completely charm you.” Calum lets out a dramatic sigh, directed to Luke. “But, alas, cock-block-Irwin strikes again.”

Luke can feel his cheeks heating up. He doesn’t know exactly what to say to that. “Uhm?”

“Good to know you have your priorities straight, Ash, even if that’s the only thing about you that is,” Calum says, narrowing his eyes on the man as he walks across the room to the couch where an old leather jacket is thrown over an arm. He seems in a rush. He plucks it from the cushion and shuffles to put it on over tattoo adorned arms, only a couple of which Luke can make out. Alright, Luke will be the first admit it; the guy's hot. “Keep all the pretty ones for yourself, don’t you, Irwie?”

Luke sends a shocked glance to Ashton who is looking at Calum with an exasperated and yet fond expression. He says, “you’re absolutely right, Cal. I’m the most selfish bastard you’ll ever meet.”

“Uh-huh.” Calum is smirking to himself as he finally gets his jacket on, running a hand through black and caramel curls to make them more presentable. “You two crazy kids have fun while I’m out. Let’s not have too much though, alright? God forbid the neighbors complain again. And I swear to God, Ashton, if I find one more used condom in my fucking bed, I’ll sue for emotional damages.”

Ashton lets out a breathy laugh. “One time! It happened one time!”

“And that was one too many!” Calum returns, words cushioned by his own chuckle as he pulls the door open. His attention turns briefly back to Luke who is rooted to the spot, head reeling from the pace of this interaction. Calum’s smile doubles. “And hey, Hemmings, if this bastard doesn’t treat you right, my number’s on the fridge. I’d be more than willing to show you a good time.”

“Off limits!” Ashton shouts.

“Yeah, yeah.” Calum’s halfway out of the room. “S’never stopped me before.”

There’s a click when the door shuts behind him and Luke blinks, staring into space, willing his brain to wrap around what just happened. He opens his mouth as he turns to look at Ashton. “Was he trying to—”

“Fuck you?” Ashton asks, snorting, completely unfazed. “Yeah. Don’t be too flattered; he does that to everyone.”

“Does he really?” Luke choruses meekly, tugging at his sleeve out of nerves, watching as Ashton moves to the TV stand, opening up one of the drawers to shuffle through the seemingly thousands of DVDs that are tucked away. 

“Yeah, I mean, don’t get me wrong, he’s a charming slut, but a slut nonetheless.” Ashton makes himself laugh as he goes through his DVDs. “He spent the first few months of our friendship trying to convince me to fuck him.”

Luke walks closer to the coffee table, still fiddling with his sleeve. “And?” 

“And I fucked him.” When Luke makes an involuntary sound of surprise, Ashton laughs, finally finding the DVD he was looking for. “It’s not a big deal. I was drunk, he was high; it was his birthday and I’d forgotten to get him a present, so I improvised. What? You’ve never fucked your roommate before?”

“No,” Luke yelps and Ashton straightens up to look at him, grinning. 

“Is he straight?” Ashton asks.

“Yeah?"

“Then that’s why!” Ashton sets the DVD on the table. “You know how to work a DVD player, right? You try to get that going while I make popcorn. I bought some for the occasion because I'm sweet like that. And fucking your roommate is not something to be shocked by, Hemmings. If yours wasn’t straight, you’d’ve done it by now too, I guarantee it. Or he'd've done it. Sheesh, with you looking like that? C’mon. If I was your roommate—”

“I, uh—” Luke moves to pick up the DVD, his head spinning, not fully processing what Ashton just implied which—if he's not mistaken—was something along the lines of 'if you were my roommate, I'd fuck you' as Ashton wanders to the half kitchen— “I didn’t know you were gay.” 

“I’m a theatre major,” Ashton replies, and yeah, that probably should have been a giveaway. “And I’m not gay; not really. I’m… yeah.”

Luke glances over his shoulder from where he has settled in front of the DVD player. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Ashton shrugs to himself as he puts a bag of popcorn in his microwave, tapping out the numbers with a passion, and hitting the side of the microwave with a full handed slap which causes it to spurt to life. “I’m me.”

Which doesn’t give a lot of information and yet, seems to give so much. Luke assumes it means that Ashton doesn’t have a label, which is… He respects that. Love is fluid, after all. It does have him wondering though who all Ashton has been with. 

Not KayKay; that had been adamantly explained to him. But, Calum (at least) once, because apparently fucking your roommate isn’t an out of the ordinary idea to Ashton. Which has to mean more men in the past, but the ‘yeah’ also signifies women to some extent, and now Luke is creating a whole fucking table chart in his brain, wondering who all on campus he's passed that have fallen victim to Ashton's hazel eyes and dimples. 

Or, perhaps, who Ashton has fallen victim to himself.

Not that he really seems the kind to fall victim, if Luke thinks on it. He can’t really imagine someone being able to break Ashton Irwin’s heart. 

The TV has started to prattle out previews and commercials now that Luke has put the DVD in and he hears popcorn bouncing to life in the microwave. Ashton is still standing beside it, hand pressed flat against the microwave door to keep it closed. 

“Cal broke it,” he explains when he realizes Luke is looking at him. “One hundred percent not my fault.”

Luke lets out a small snort. “I’m sure.”

“So your roommate—” Ashton tries to start up a conversation and Luke is starting to realize that maybe Ashton isn’t so much a friendly guy, he simply doesn’t like to have silence for too long— “Are you two close?”

“He’s my best friend,” Luke answers in truth, standing up from the TV and walking around the coffee table to the couch. 

Ashton collects the information, nodding to himself. “He’s the uh… the Clifford guy, right? Had his hair dyed like six different times sophomore year? That’ll walk you from class sometimes?”

Luke is surprised Ashton knows any of that and he can’t keep the expression from his face when he turns back, brows raised. 

“What?” Ashton asks, smiling. “I pay attention.”

“Yeah, uh, his name’s Michael,” Luke fills in and he watches as the microwave beeps that it’s finished and Ashton lets the door fall open. “I don’t know; I just… didn’t think you would.”

“Why not?” Ashton pulls the bag of popcorn out and lets out a hiss at how hot it is, bouncing it in his hands. “All good actors pay attention.”

Luke wonders if that is a dig or not on him not being a good actor. The Luke part of his brain tells him it’s an insult, but the logic part tells him that Ashton hasn’t showed any indication of wanting to insult him so it wouldn’t make a lot of sense to start now.

“Do you not?” Ashton asks, getting the bag open so steam spills into the air in front of him, dumping the kernels into a large bowl.

“I don’t really think about it to be honest, if I watch people or not,” Luke answers, frowning, because now he’s asking himself if he should have been paying attention to everything around him all these years and if that’s the reason he’s such a bad actor. 

“It’s good for you.” Ashton carries the bowl of popcorn to the coffee table. “Always helps me to watch people to… So I know how people really act. To be more real.”

“Oh. Yeah, I think I’ve heard that before. Forgot.” 

Luke rubs at the back of his neck, watching Ashton set the bowl down before sitting beside Luke on the couch heavily, the furniture sinking beneath him and Luke feels his body involuntarily shift to be closer to him. He makes a conscious effort to move away. 

“Okay.” Ashton claps his hands together. “Make sure to really watch the movie, okay?”

“For real?” Luke asks. “I was planning on _not_ watching it.”

“You know what I mean,” Ashton argues, still smiling, and Luke—in honesty—has yet to see him genuinely frown. “You’re gonna be Ned, so make sure to watch him. The problems he has with himself, how he expresses those to others, how he loves Felix. The hurt he has for him when he's dying; it's almost like Ned is dying himself. I’ll tell you when we get to scene fourteen, but I think you’ll already know.”

And he does. 

Luke knows. 

Before Ashton even says which one scene fourteen is, he knows. 

He’s read the stage directions before, and he sees it now on screen an hour later.

> INT. NED's apartment. FELIX is sitting on the floor. He has been eating junk food. NED comes in carrying a bag of groceries.

And there it is on Ashton’s TV, Felix (played by a far too skinny Matt Bomer) sitting on the floor, one knee pulled to his chest, head against the wall behind him. His eyebrows are angled up and there’s _pain_ on his face. Fuck, he is bleeding out pain from every edge of his body and his soul, down to how his mouth is twisted to a grimace and the whites of his eyes are a shiny red.

Luke has one of his fists clenched in his lap and the other is white knuckling the arm of the couch as he watches, transfixed.

It doesn’t seem to have the same effect on Ashton who is happily crunching on popcorn (he has moved the bowl to his own lap) while watching, legs kicked up onto his glass coffee table, shoes kicked off onto the carpet. 

Ned walks through the door on the screen, asking Felix, _‘why’re you sitting on the floor?’_ and Luke swears he can’t breathe.

The scene only lasts a few minutes but the impression is going to last a lifetime. 

The way their voices break when they scream, the way tears threaten to spill over their lash lines but don’t, the way everything builds and builds and builds to one shattering culmination and Luke’s heart rate beats faster and faster and faster until it feels like his chest may crack in two and pour his heart out onto the carpet. 

There’s one line that echoes in his head as the scene ends, richoteing around his thoughts, bouncing from the corners of his brain. It’s said by Ned—who Luke is now terrified to play—and it’s screamed, shrill and hurt and too honest, _‘you want to die, Felix? Then die!’_

A gallon of milk smashes on the wall, breaking apart on the screen, and Luke violently flinches where he is sitting on the couch. 

Ashton glances to his side, noticing the sudden movement, and he asks, “hey, Hemmings, you okay?”

“I—” Luke shakes his head— “Can you pause it?”

It doesn’t take more than a second for Ashton to lurch across the coffee table to get the remote in his hand and pause the movie, frozen on the image of Ned reaching out for Felix who is sitting on the floor among cluttered groceries and spilled milk. 

Ashton looks back at Luke, concern knitting his brow, and Luke can’t help but think that _oh, now I know what he looks like when he frowns._

Ashton asks, “what’s up?”

“That’s the scene we’re doing.” Luke points at the screen and Ashton’s eyes follow the trajectory. 

“Yeah.” He lets out a small chuckle. “I told you. It’s _the_ scene. I mean… to do it on stage is gonna be—It’s gonna be something else.”

Luke’s bottom lip wobbles. “I can’t do that scene.”

“What d’you mean?” Ashton asks. 

Luke gets to his feet, a hand pressed to his hairline, keeping blonde curls back and he repeats, distraught, “I can’t do that fucking scene. That’s—that’s an _acting_ scene.”

Ashton is staring up at him. “Now you’ve lost me.” 

“That is an acting scene. Capital A, acting.” Luke rubs his fingers through his hair and he hates how greasy it feels. “Like… like, as in a scene that’s about feeling and reality and truth… and I can’t do that. I’m a performer. I can’t do that.”

Ashton takes a long, slow blink as if collecting what Luke has said to him and not understanding. “Maybe you should sit down, Hemmings.”

“I’m gonna have a breakdown,” Luke whispers, his other hand flying to his head, clasping his temples in the heels of his hands, and Ashton doesn’t seem to like that very much, scrambling to get on his own feet. 

“Woah, now, let’s not do that,” he suggests, holding his hands out to Luke like he’s talking to a child or a man on a ledge. “Just take a deep breath, okay, there’s nothing to get freaked out over. You’re okay.”

“I can’t do an acting scene with you!” Luke says, staring at him. “You’re an actor.”

Ashton hesitates. “You are also… an actor? Hence… why we’re doing a scene together in the first place.”

“No, you don’t understand,” Luke groans, curls strung out between his fingers. “I’m a performer. You’re an actor. All actors are performers but not all performers are actors. Actors are… they feel it; they believe it. And I can’t do that. I haven’t made that shift yet, I just—I’m surface level.”

His fingers smooth his hair back over and over again and he lets out a hard breath. His voice cracks.

“I have blank eyes.”

Ashton’s expression softens and he tilts his head, letting out a small huff. “Hemmings, you’re not seriously gonna lose it on account of one note Dale gave you, are you? He was a fucking bully. He ripped everyone apart.”

“Not you.”

“He said I talked fast,” Ashton replies, waving a hand. “Which I do. It’s a good note. He’s a good teacher, but he’s still a dick, and you shouldn’t be having a goddamn anxiety attack over something he said. Trust me, you were good.”

“I was fake!” Luke emphasizes.

“You were stilted,” Ashton amends. “But you weren’t bad. You’re just… You didn’t believe yourself.”

Luke’s hands slip from his hair and he stands beside the coffee table, blinking his irritated blue eyes at Ashton, hoping they aren’t watering like he thinks they are. Like he knows they are.

Ashton gives him a worried look and he offers, “you’re good, Hemmings, really. The only person that needs convincing of that is you. You’ve gotta learn how to trust yourself. And, hey, we can figure that out, okay?”

“We?” Luke repeats, thrown off, and Ashton lets out a laugh it sounds like he didn’t mean to make. 

He massages the base of his neck. “Sure, yeah. We’re scene partners and… I mean, it’s my grade too. If you fuck up, you bring me down with you.”

“Wow, yeah,” Luke deadpans. “No pressure there.”

“I’m not trying to stress you out!” Ashton says, laughing again, and it’s this sweet sound like when Ashton doesn’t know what else to do, he resorts to laughter. It’s a good thing to resort to. Luke resorts to crying. “We need to make you more… natural.”

“Really kicking me while I’m down here,” Luke says, a hand returning to his forehead to hold his throbbing headache in. 

Ashton lets out one of those last resort laughs and tries, “You know what I mean! Acting isn’t pretending to be someone; it’s about actually being them. We need to make you trust yourself enough to just _be_.”

“How the fuck do we do that?” Luke asks in exasperation. 

“Beats me.” Ashton snorts. “We could try signing you up for improv classes or something.”

“I don’t have time to take improv classes!” Luke’s heart is pumping oddly in his chest and he can hear it in his ears. 

“Then we’ll do something else,” Ashton says and Luke is pretty thrown off by this guy’s willingness to try and work on this with him. Any other partner would probably have started yelling at Luke by now (and he knows that from first hand experience). “We can uh… We could…”

He glances around like the small dorm is going to somehow bless him with inspiration. 

“We have to make you trusting with me, and acting like you could love me in a scene. And making it believable that you could love me, and making it seem normal. Also just, making us comfortable together. We have to make it normal. We just have to make it—”

He pauses, eyes on the bedroom door that Calum had come out of several hours earlier.

His voice draws off into a hush. “We have to make it believable that you could love me.” 

“Yeah, I got that,” Luke says, hands on his head. 

Ashton’s hazel eyes land on him and there’s that look in his gaze that Luke would know on anyone. The light bulb face. The good old _I’ve got an idea_ expression and Ashton asks, his last-resort-laugh hugging the words, “you ever tried method acting before, Hemmings?”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Threshold, Threshold, Threshold !!!

“No!” Luke says, reeling back. “We can’t do that!”

“Why the hell not? It’s not a bad idea!” Ashton urges, brows raised in emphasis and arms raising with them.

“It’s a terrible fucking idea!” 

Luke’s eyes have grown twice their size and he is shaking his head back and forth, fingers edging back into his curls as new stress for new reasons starts to set in and curl around his thoughts in ribbons. Tie his anxieties up nice in a bow. Seriously, is Ashton Irwin fucking insane? 

“I’m not going to… to _date_ you!" He splutters. "Have you lost your mind?”

“Not _actually_ date,” Ashton returns like that makes it somehow better, very matter-of-fact about the whole thing. “It would be an acting exercise s’all. We live as the characters. You know how many actors use method acting? So fucking many. Daniel Day-Lewis, Robert De Niro, Christian Bale—” he counts them on his fingers— “And that’s just to name a few! I think it could really help you. Hell, I think it could help me too.”

“I think it could really drive me to insanity,” Luke says in a scoff. He’s started pacing across the shaggy carpet of Ashton’s dorm. “I mean… I mean _you_? And me? N-no. No, hell no. That’s absurd.”

“It’s genius,” Ashton replies. “It would force you to get into character, to _feel_ it. That’s your problem; is that you can’t truly embrace the mindset. This could help. I mean, if we can convince all our closest friends that we’re in love, it should be a fucking cakewalk to convince an auditorium of strangers.”

Luke gawks, set off kilter by the whole idea. Because… what the fuck? No, seriously, what the fuck? 

This is only the second time he and Ashton have had a full conversation that’s lasted longer than five minutes and now Ashton is proposing that they _date_ each other? Granted, not real dating, but _fake_ dating, which is about the craziest fucking thing Luke has ever heard in his life. 

Although, he can’t help but admit that the logic Ashton’s using does sound fairly sound. It’s true; if he could convince Michael (who is in all respects the person that knows him best) he is in love with Ashton, Dale (who knows jackshit about him) shouldn’t be that hard. 

It might help him get into character if he thinks about it… and it would be sort of interesting to see… But no! No, he is not entertaining the suggestions of a mad man.

“I’m not saying we have to,” Ashton carries on, gesturing with his hands as he talks, “but I think it’d be pretty smart. It’s the acting test to end all acting tests. The whole world’s your stage. High stakes, pushing you and your talent to your limits, truly seeing how far you can go, I—” he breaks off in an astonished laugh, smiling— “it sounds fucking incredible to me.”

“My love life is not a grand scheme acting exercise,” Luke argues, moving his hands from his hair to wrap around himself in a hug, trying to protect his heart. 

Ashton pauses, a realization seeming to hit him and he goes, “oh, wait, shit. Do you have a boyfriend or something? I don’t mean to overstep.”

“Uh—” Luke stubs his sneakers on the ground, voice rising an octave in embarrassment— “No. I… No, I don’t.”

“So what’s stopping us from doing this?” Ashton asks. “Again, not forcing you into it or anything but… I think this could be fun, if nothing else. I think this could be the greatest acting challenge of all time. And I know for a fact, it’d help you out with your… what’d you call it? Being a performer?”

That catches Luke’s attention and he directs his eyes up to Ashton who is bouncing on his heels excitedly, all bright hazel eyes, crooked smile, and honey curls over his forehead. Objectively speaking, it’s not unbelievable that Luke would date someone who looks and acts like Ashton (if Ashton weren’t… _Ashton_ … and Luke hadn’t been building up how much he hated him for the last year). 

It would actually be more unbelievable that someone like Ashton would want to date someone like Luke. 

And okay… maybe a little bit, Luke is considering it now because Ashton does have a point that it would be a very impressive exercise and it would help with his acting and his scene delivery... 

If he has to convince Michael and Sierra and Crystal—who are the most suspicious and conclusion-jumping bastards on the planet—that he and Ashton are in love, then it would be easy to convince Dale of it. 

The logic really does… to an extent… make _sense_.

Luke wets his lips, eyes flitting over Ashton and his smile and wide, exuberant eyes. 

“How long?” he asks quietly. 

Ashton’s mouth opens in shock before he replies, “for our fake dating?”

“Yeah, how long would we do it?” Luke massages the side of his arm, deciding to avoid eye contact with those hazel irises and the way the glint with the admission. 

“Not long,” Ashton assures, “only until we do the scene and then we can stop. Call it quits the second after we perform. Not any longer than it has to be.”

Luke nods to himself, collecting the information into his head. “Okay and uh… when would it start?”

“It can’t start immediately.” Ashton rubs at the side of his face where a light peach fuzz lingers on his chin from a day without shaving. “We’ve only hung out twice now; it’d look a bit suspicious if we went ahead and bopped on to our friends and said ‘guess what? We’re dating now!’ with no precursor… No… No, we need a backstory.”

Luke huffs. “A backstory? Really?” 

“Yeah,” Ashton says like it should be obvious. “Every good character has a backstory. Even the ones you never hear on stage or in the script. That’s half of acting. Knowing what happens to your character before they even enter the world of a play.”

Luke tilts his head in question, urging him to continue because he’s heard advice similar in all his years of performance but he’d like for Ashton to expand. He hasn’t heard it yet from Ashton.

“A play isn’t your character’s only moment existing.” Ashton seems confused that Luke doesn’t understand him, but he doesn’t speak down to Luke like he’s an idiot, more like he’s eager to be the one explaining it to him. “A play is the middle of your character’s life. They have moments before that and they’ll most likely have moments after unless they die in the world of the play. A play is only one singular snapshot, right?”

“But those stories are never written in the script?” Luke prompts, noting how Ashton uses his hands to speak, motioning around with them and touching his face and toying his necklace with his fingers while he blabbers. 

“Yeah, you make it up yourself.” Ashton’s last resort laughter returns. “For an actor, Hemmings, you don’t seem to know that much about acting.”

“I told you,” Luke returns, slightly offended by the comment, but not disagreeing, “I’m a performer.”

“And see, that’s why this—” Ashton gestures between the two of them, taking a step forward— “Could work. This could really fucking work for us, Hemmings. Operation Scene Fourteen.”

“It doesn’t need a code name,” Luke replies, reaching to pinch the bridge of his nose. 

Ashton smirks. “Every good conspiracy needs a code name. You act like you’ve never schemed before.”

Luke can’t hold in the surprised laugh that parts his lips. “That’s because I haven’t.”

“Hey, there’s a first time for everything!” Ashton walks towards him more. Only a foot or two divides them now and Luke considers stepping backwards but finds himself staying rooted to the spot, watching Ashton move. “Hemmings, you have no idea the number of first times I could teach you. Scheme or no.”

“If you’re talking about my virginity,” Luke says, noting the tone, “you’ve missed that boat.”

“I wasn’t,” Ashton replies and Luke’s cheeks heat up because, fuck, now he looks like a moron yet again, “But it’s nice to know that’s where your head’s at. And the way you say that…" Ashton bites his lip. "Makes me think we have a deal.”

He extends his hand between them and Luke darts his eyes from the outstretched hand up to Ashton’s hazel irises which are glittery with excitement, with prospect and promise and secrets yet to be kept and told. 

And Luke thinks briefly to himself that this is probably the dumbest thing he’ll ever do.

“We’ll need to make rules,” he says, hands still wrapped around himself. 

“I can work with rules. Every good scheme has rules,” Ashton replies. He waits for a second before he lowers his voice almost to a hush. “Is that a yes, Hemmings?”

Luke inhales, chest rising, regarding Ashton’s hand again. He says, “I’ve got to be crazy.”

“Not a bad thing to be,” Ashton tells him.

Without another protest, Luke grabs his hand and shakes. 

Ashton’s hand is larger than his own and his fingers are longer and his palms are rougher, but the grasp is warm and strong and makes Luke chew at the inside of his cheek. Ashton’s smile curls further up and his laugh is another one of those disbelieving types that sounds like it tickles his throat before it reaches the air. 

“Alright, Hemmings,” Ashton says, squeezing his hand once tightly before letting go. “Guess that makes me your boyfriend, then, doesn’t it?”

Luke retracts his hand, his palm hot. “And I guess that makes me yours.”

“Real honor,” Ashton teases. 

“Yeah.” Luke’s thoughts fall over one another in a rush to reach the forefront of his brain. “Yeah, I’m sure it is.”

***

Sierra has her eyes fixed on him from the kitchen and Luke is trying to ignore the gaze but he can’t, so finally, he exhales and asks, “okay, what is it?”

“You’re doing that thing,” she says without hesitation. 

“What thing?” Luke’s thoughts pause, panicked. He hasn’t even done anything and yet, somehow, he’s been caught in the act. “I’m not doing a thing. There’s no thing here.”

They are once again in his dorm except for the fact that Crystal and Michael aren’t here because they supposedly ‘got held up at the store while getting supplies’ which is a polite way of saying ‘sorry guys, decided to have a quickie in the car so we’re running late; don’t wait up.’ It’s not uncommon with them. Luke has come to expect it. 

“There’s definitely a thing,” Sierra returns, folding her arms over her chest. She is sitting on the counter dividing the living room area and the half kitchen, swinging her legs off it like a child. “You’ve got that dumb mom-says-it's-my-turn-on-the-xbox look on your face you get and you’re playing with your sleeves and humming Frank Ocean. That’s your thing.”

“I don’t have a thing,” Luke replies, opening the fridge. He reaches for a beer. “And I don’t look like I… want to play xbox.”

“Rootbeer is on the bottom shelf, little man,” Sierra reminds and Luke growls at her, moving to the lower shelf to get the children’s drink instead because apparently he can't be trusted when he's under the influence. “And you do too have a thing. Remember when you broke Michael’s favorite Skylander freshman year? And he asked you what happened to it. D'you remember what you did?”

Luke grumbles, “I sang the first verse to ‘Chanel.’”

“You sang the first verse to ‘Chanel.’”

“In my defense—” Luke stands up with the neck of his rootbeer in hand— “He was nineteen years old and playing Skylanders; someone had to do something.”

“The point stands,” Sierra replies, cocking her head. “You’re doing a thing. So, do tell, Mr. Hemmings; what did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything,” Luke protests and he walks across the room, hoping he doesn’t look too nervous as he wanders over floorboards in decorative socks. 

“For an actor,” Sierra calls, “you’re a shitty liar.”

Luke turns on his heels, socks making him slide, holding his rootbeer to his chest, an inquisitive look on his face, blurting out, “Thao, do you really think I have a crush on Ashton?”

It doesn’t take more than a second for Sierra’s lips to quirk into a smirk as she slides off the counter to the floor, dusting off her blouse. “Why do you ask, Lukey?”

Luke shrugs innocently. “No reason, I uh… I don’t know; I’m thinking.”

“About?” she wonders.

There’s this scratchy, stupid voice in the back of Luke’s brain that sounds so similar to Ashton’s that whispers and tickles his brain, ‘you need a backstory, don’t you? Then make a fucking backstory, bitch.’

Luke chews at his bottom lip. “So, it may be nothing, but his friend tried to flirt with me at their dorm and Ashton said that I was… off-limits? And, I don’t know, it almost sounded like he was—” he gives her a hesitant peak— “jealous?”

That’s not at all true in his perspective. To him, it had seemed like Ashton was having casual fun with a far too flirty friend; a common occurrence considering that Ashton himself is also far too flirty. Luke isn’t special by any means and he knows that. But saying it out loud makes Sierra’s brown eyes widen and her body perk up and she is quick to bounce up and down on her heels. 

“Seriously?” She has her hands balled into excited fists that she shakes passionately in front of him and Luke can’t help but smile at her, because, c’mon, she’s fucking tiny and he loves her. “Luke, oh my god! He’s probably into you!”

Luke is trying so hard to hold back a smirk. He tries to feign insecurity—which isn’t that hard because there is no world in which Ashton would really like him, and Ashton is a hell of a lot more talented and a better person than he is so being insecure around him isn’t hard. “I don’t think so.”

“Luke!” Sierra tries, crossing the few feet to grab him by the shoulders. “The man made a claim on you!”

“A _clai_ —” Luke blinks in alarm— “Thao, have you been reading those werewolf romances again?”

“They’re so good, I think you would really like them if you gave them a try,” she rambles off-topic, leaning back to put her hands on her hips and pull a thoughtful expression, “There’s this one I’m reading right now called _Silver Moon_ and the main romantic interest, Thaddeus, confessed his love through—No, don’t distract me! Ashton is calling dibs on you, Lu! This a sign!”

“A sign of _what_?” Luke asks, staring down at her, holding his rootbeer against himself like he expects her to take it (not that anyone in their group drinks rootbeer but him). “Your terrible taste?”

Sierra ignores him. “You should go for it. He’s hot.”

“He’s hypothetically my mortal enemy,” Luke reminds.

“That only makes it hotter.”

Before Luke can even think of something to tease her back with, the door is unlocked and pushed open, and they turn to see Crystal and Michael staggering into the room, giggling with one another, arms already linked and lips not far behind. 

Crystal’s hair is messy and her glossy lipstick is smudged, and Michael has a pink lipstick stain to match on his collar bone that is made visible by the fact that the first three buttons of his shirt are undone. 

“You look like whores,” Luke greets. 

“Who went down on who?” Sierra seconds, backing away from Luke to put her hands on her hips.

Michael laughs, reaching up to fix one of the buttons. Crystal stifles a laugh with her palm, and when she steps inside, her ankle slips on the wooden floor and she stumbles, bracing her hand against the wall, which causes Michael to laugh harder as he reaches out to steady her, and that answers that question. 

“You two are gross and I hate you,” Luke says, popping the cap of his rootbeer to take a swig. Sierra agrees with a disgusted grunt. 

“So,” Michael says, flashing a wink to Luke, “other than Crys, what’s for dinner?”

Sierra makes a harsh gagging sound and Luke chokes rather violently on his rootbeer and he has to pound on his chest to help himself breathe again while Sierra has to clap him on the back. 

Michael can’t seem to stop laughing, dissolving into hiccups, even after Crystal has smacked him playfully in the back of the head, her cheeks turned rosy.

***

Luke calls Ashton from the patio at seven p.m. after the girls have left and Michael is passed out on the couch, a hand draped over his stomach, and the blanket Luke had given him draped over his legs.

Ashton picks up on the second ring, and he’s in the middle of a stumbling sort of laugh, one that seems to have been going on for some while, several voices chattering on behind him in the background, laughing in the same manner. 

“Yeah,” he says between wheezes, “go for Ashton, what’s up?”

“I’ve planted a seed,” Luke informs and Ashton makes a sound of confusion while there’s some static as though he’s shifting the phone to his other ear. 

Ashton says, more muffled to the phone like he’s turned away, laughter drawing off for a moment, “huh? What was his name? I thought we just agreed to—and now you’re banging some other guy?”

“What?” Luke asks, before it dawns on him and he splutters out, “No, _no_ , I’m not talking about—Jesus Christ— I mean that I’ve started a backstory for us.”

Instantly, Ashton perks up, his bewilderment trading itself right back to joyous laughter. “Oh shit, you have? Hold on a second.” He announces to the people in the background, louder than perhaps he should need to, which insinuates to Luke that something has impaired their senses; either weed or alcohol or maybe both, “I gotta take this outside, guys, it’s scene work stuff.”

There’s a muffled voice that replies in a suspire, which Luke can’t quite make out. 

“No, I’m not gonna have phone sex,” Ashton remarks back before he adds, thoughtful, “or, not tonight anyway.”

A giggling reply.

“I’ll ask,” Ashton says to them before he turns back to the phone to Luke. “Hey, you into phone sex, Hemmings?”

Luke doesn’t miss the howl of laughter from Ashton’s side of the line and, from what he now knows, he associates it with Calum. Luke deadpans, “your roommate’s funny.”

“He tries to be.” 

There’s the rustling of Ashton getting up from where he must be sitting and walking away from the sounds of voices before a door shuts loudly and the background noise has faded away until it’s only Ashton’s fading chuckle on the line and the familiar buzz of quiet’s static. 

He asks, softer now, as if he’s cupping his hand around the phone’s receiver and it’s a conspiracy for the two of them alone (which makes Luke feel so important and necessary), “Tell me about your seed. Fuck, no, wait—”

“I’m dropping hints,” Luke interrupts, not willing to get into whatever the fuck it was Ashton said, “with my friend, Sierra. She already thinks I have a crush on you.”

“Oh?” Ashton makes a tiny purr into the phone. “You’ve made her think that?”

Luke hacks a nervous sound, massaging his forearm. He sends a glance through the patio window to Michael asleep on the couch, squirming around under his blanket. “She sort of thought it already. But I’ve stopped trying to convince her otherwise.”

“Aw, Hemmings,” Ashton teases and the lower register of his voice is enough to make blood rush to Luke’s face as he realizes what he’s about to be accused of, “you should have told me you were crushing.”

“For the record,” Luke replies, hoping he doesn’t trip on the words, “I don’t have a crush on you. She jumps to conclusions.”

Ashton laughs and Luke imagines his smirk and his dimples. “If you say so. But, on that note, I’ve been doing some recon myself.”

“Really?” Luke asks, straightening up in curiosity. Nice to know that it’s not a one-sided effort. 

“Yeah, I’m hanging with KayKay and Cal tonight—” which explains the bustling laughter when Luke first called— “and me and Cal were talking about guys so I slipped in that I thought you had a nice ass.”

Luke can’t hold back an alarmed sound pulling from his throat as he blurts, “you said what!”

“Well, you do!” Ashton replies in a snort. “I’m being realistic. Nobody’ll believe it if I do it your way. I can’t do the whole ‘aw, maybe I have a wittle crush on him, heart eyes’ thing with my friends; that’s not me. But it’s cute to know you’re the kind of guy that can.” 

Luke is so glad Michael’s asleep and can’t hear him on the patio or see the way his cheeks have flushed red, mouth fallen open. He fumbles to get words out but all he makes is a tiny squeak into the phone of indignation. 

Ashton laughs again and, while it’s a nice sound, it only makes Luke flush further down his neck. “Listen, there’s no issues with it, Hemmings. You do it your way, I’ll do it mine, and we’ll meet in the middle. But my friends aren’t gonna believe it if I suddenly start getting all gooey about some guy I’m scene partners with. I don’t do crushes.”

Luke asks, rubbing at his neck, hoping to will the heat away, “What the fuck do you do then?”

“I do sex,” Ashton says in another happy scoff, “like an adult.”

“Okay… I do… more than that,” Luke replies, and now he’s getting nervous—properly nervous—because what has he agreed to with this whole Fake Dating Scene Fourteen Scheme? To make everyone think he’s one more name in Ashton Irwin’s long line of hookups? 

The whole point of this was faking love. 

“Oh.” Ashton makes a knowing sound. “You’re one of those people.”

“One of what people?” Luke contends, at a loss.

Ashton hums. “Monogamy. One of those ‘apple pie, white picket fence, two rocking chairs on the porch when we’re old’ kind of people.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Luke murmurs into the receiver.

“It’s not, it’s just, y’know—” a rustle like he’s shrugging— “Not what I’m into.”

“Okay, well, none of _my_ friends are gonna believe it if I start hooking up out of nowhere with my scene partner.” Luke folds his arms, thinking _and they’re especially not going to believe it if it’s you_ and glares even though Ashton can’t see him. “I’m not a fucking harlot.”

Ashton lets out a sharp laugh. “You did not say 'harlot.'”

“The point stands!” Luke argues. “I don’t do casual hookups and I don’t sleep with my roommates when I’m drunk. Hell, I don’t even get drunk!”

Ashton exhales, humor dancing on each syllable. “I’ve got me my very own Walter Mitty, huh?”

Luke answers, leaning against the railing of his patio. “If that’s an insult, I’m not insulted.”

“It’s not.” Ashton’s voice is soft, and Luke chalks it up to not wanting to be heard by the people inside his dorm but it’s sweet, in a way too, and Luke forces himself to swallow.

“Yeah,” Luke answers, glancing down at the street below him. “I’m a… romantic, or, fucking dreamer, or whatever you wanna call it.”

Ashton isn’t laughing anymore but it sounds like there’s a smile in his words, a gentler sort, and when he speaks it’s similar to how silk feels running through fingers. “Then I guess we’re gonna have to make some compromises, huh, Hemmings? Dile me down a bit… Rile you up.”

Luke chews at the inside of his cheek as he watches cars bump along the street in the dark, their headlights the only thing casting light ahead of them, otherwise going blind alone down the beaten path. He rubs the pad of his finger on the railing, rubbing off some rust. He doesn’t like going into things blind. Wishes he had his own headlights to shine into the future, so he could figure out if Ashton Irwin is the sort of bastard he can trust or if he’s the sort of bastard he should damn.

“Yeah,” he mumbles. “Guess so.”

“Let’s meet after class Tuesday, okay?” Ashton proposes. “And we can make some rules for ourselves and what we’re planning to do. Tell me what I can and can’t say about your ass.”

Luke nearly chokes on his laugh. “Yeah, that sounds good. Thanks, Ash.”

“Oh, shit. Nicknames already?” Ashton asks and it takes Luke a second to realize what he means, jolting with a start that he said that at all because he hadn’t meant to. One of those mental typos. He really hadn’t meant to say that. “You’re gonna be a real charmer at this, I can already tell. Be careful now. Don’t want me to actually get a crush on you, do you?”

“Don’t worry,” Luke says, rubbing rust from the railing off onto his pants. “You don’t get crushes, remember?”

“Hey—” He pictures Ashton’s dimples and the way they hug his full smile before he hangs up— “Like I said. There’s a first time for everything.”

***

Luke finds himself looking forward to Tuesday afternoon and while that should be a massive as hell red flag, he elects to ignore the feeling altogether and not bother his brain with the fact that not a week ago he wanted Ashton out of commission and now, all of sudden, he’s happy spending time with him.

“Meeting with Spinach again, hm?” Michael asks as they walk across campus, getting to the turn where Luke will diverge from him to walk to Ashton’s dorm. 

Luke comes to a stop, giving Michael a look as he hoists his backpack higher on his shoulder. “Please stop trying to give him a vegetable-related code name.”

What is it with the people in his life trying to give things code names? 

Michael kicks the air, directing green eyes to the ground. “You don’t let me have any fun.”

Luke rolls his eyes, smiling. “Yeah, I’m going to meet with Ashton about the scene again.”

“Third time seeing him now,” Michael says, raising his brows, “you know what people say about third times. This is either the date when you put out, or when you stab him.”

“I can tell you that I don’t plan on putting out,” Luke replies, pinching his own forearm, and Michael smacks his lips. 

“Guess that answers that question. I’ll start getting my ‘bail Luke out of jail’ fund ready, and reach out to local lawyers.”

“You’re a lifesaver.” Luke gives him a pat on the back with a grin before he starts down the opposite path. “I’ll see you later, Mike!”

“Yep,” Michael calls after him, hands cupped around his mouth, “I’ll see you in holding, buddy! Remember, they can’t keep you more than forty-eight hours without probable cause! Make sure not to leave fingerprints!”

Luke doesn’t miss the way that some people from the surrounding area send them concerned glances and whisper to each other. 

It’s fine. He’s letting his brain ignore the red flags about Ashton; he will elect to ignore these too.

***

“I feel like you’re taking this too seriously,” Ashton decides.

He is standing over Luke, who is sitting at the desk in Ashton’s bedroom, jotting notes in the journal he brought with him which he has dubbed the ‘Scene 14’ planning journal (that he will be hiding very safe and secure beneath his bed for no one to ever find because he never wants anyone _ever_ to find out about what he and Ashton are doing because he will never outlive the embarrasment). 

“Do you want this to be a good scheme or not?” Luke asks as he writes. “We need to be organized.”

“But is this _too_ organized?” Ashton wonders. He is standing far too close to Luke’s back, his elbow grazing Luke’s sleeve when he moves. “Half the point of this is being natural. Taking it as it comes. Doesn’t a meticulously planned diary defeat the purpose of that?”

“Not a diary. And most everything will still be improv,” Luke answers, setting his pen down as he turns in the seat, resting his arm on the back of it to talk to Ashton, tilting his head up at him, so his curls fall and he has to tuck them behind his ears to keep them out of his face. “This is for major details. Y’know, so we don’t mess up our timeline or anything.”

Ashton smiles down at him, his own hair falling forward and he doesn’t move to rectify it. “You’re making us a timeline?”

“We have to know when we started dating and why. Like you said, we need a backstory. It won’t make sense if I come home to Mike one day and go, ‘guess what! I’ve got a boyfriend!’” _And it’s the guy that I’ve been complaining to you about for the last year; nothing sketchy about that_. “There has to be build-up.”

Ashton pulls away to walk across the room and walk back, pacing around his bedroom on sock-clad feet. He wears pink socks. 

It’s a pretty nice room, all in all, with a long twin bed that has blue blankets and a small work desk, but Ashton seems a messy person, with books and scripts piled at random leisure against the foot of his bed and there’s a dead plant on the top of his dresser and a non-pink sock hanging out of one of the drawers. But it’s homey, and it’s nice. 

Comfort.

It smells like inky pages and citrusy cologne.

“Okay.” Ashton rubs at the back of his neck where a condor tattoo sits that Luke hasn’t fully noticed until now. “So, how do we build? I made the ass comment—”

“Yeah, no more of those,” Luke interrupts and Ashton gives him a cheeky grin in response over his shoulder, the condor tattoo disappearing when he turns around. “You can tell your friends I’m attractive but don’t fucking… objectify me.”

Ashton sniggers. “Wholesome compliments only, note taken.”

“And I’ll keep Sierra on the breadcrumb trail that I have a slight crush.” Luke jots down. 

“And if you want to,” Ashton offers, raising his brows, “you’re more than welcome to objectify _me_.”

“Duly noted,” Luke takes into account because it wouldn’t be hard to objectify Ashton to his friends.

Luke could talk about his lips in obscene detail, and he knows that; their cupid's bow and light pink tint, how they are full and curved and probably have done their fair share of kissing among other (far more sinful) things. He could talk for ages about what he knows those lips could do to him. 

He could, but he won’t.

“Suppose we’ll do this small clue stuff for… say a week and a half?” Ashton suggests, unaware of the gutter Luke’s thoughts have fallen down; how they’re crawling through dark crevices in his fantasy, and the way blue eyes are trained on a pink cupid’s bow. “And then we’ve gotta go bigger.”

“How do we go bigger?” Luke asks, tugging his eyes away from Ashton’s lips and up to make out how Ashton bounces his brows up and down. 

“We’ve gotta start dropping clues,” he explains, walking back to where Luke is sitting and bracing his hands against the head of the chair so Luke’s back rests against his knuckles. “Like… _big_ clues.”

Luke creases his brow, insinuating with his eyes that he doesn’t know what that means. 

Ashton pats him on the shoulder. “We’ll get there when we get there.”

“I don’t like the way you said that,” Luke replies, turning back around in his chair to see him better, shrugging his hand off, and Ashton snorts, hanging his head and using his hands against the head of the chair to lean back. 

“Hemmings, you know what our origin story has to be.” Ashton peers up, hazel eyes peeking through inky eyelashes.

It takes a suggestive eyebrow raise for it to click and Luke crinkles his nose.

“You’re a real slut, aren’t you?” he asks.

Ashton’s grin is all shiny teeth and dimples. “Guilty as charged.”

“Speaking of that,” Luke moves to write again, taking on a more serious tone, “not that it’s gonna be a concern for _me_ , but we can’t be sleeping with other people while we’re doing this.”

“What!” Ashton protests, letting go of the chair to straighten up. “That’s ridiculous. Unless _you’re_ gonna fuck me, I have to get off somehow.”

“You’ve got a left hand and amazon. Buy yourself something pretty,” Luke reminds and Ashton throws his head back with an agonizing sound. Luke knows it shouldn’t be where his mind goes but, wow, the way those lips part when Ashton groans is... He distracts himself by saying, “Listen, this is for the scheme! God forbid we get into this and then someone sees you taking someone home while you’re supposedly dating me! Fake dating is one thing; a fake cheating scandal is not something I’m equipped to handle.”

Ashton stares at his far wall dramatically, taking in a theatrical breath before he says, “You drive a hard bargain, Hemmings.”

“If you want to do this,” Luke replies, feigning momentary sweetness, “I’m your one and only, baby.” 

Ashton peers over his shoulder, pointing at him. “Same goes for you, _baby_. Don’t go getting crushes on other people while I’m the one making love to you.”

“Never say you’re ‘making love to me' again,” Luke answers, a series of goosebumps that prove his lack in judgment creeping up his arms, “and you’ve got a deal.”

Ashton returns back to Luke’s side, once again placing his hands on the back of the chair and leaning over Luke’s shoulder to examine the journal and Luke’s neat, curly handwriting, which he reaches out to poke with his index finger. “Aw. You write like it’s a font.”

Before Luke has a chance to reply, Ashton has retracted his hand and started speaking again.

“And hey, in that same vein,” he says, “we better get some basics out of the way.”

“Like?” Luke inquires. 

“Like—” Ashton dips his head, almost tapping Luke’s hair with his chin— “are you a top or a bottom?”

Luke flips around, causing Ashton to step back with the sudden movement, squawking, “what the fuck is up with you and saying the most vulgar things when I least expect it? Why would you need to know that!”

Ashton shoots his hands up in surrender. “I’m your boyfriend! Chances are, I’d know that kind of thing.”

“Yeah, but we’re not actually going to have sex!” Luke snaps, his cheeks turning a furious shade of pink. He wishes that Ashton would stop making him blush; it’s getting humiliating. 

“But our friends are going to think we are!” Ashton replies and, _fuck_ , Luke hadn’t thought about that, because it’s one hundred percent true. God knows when he tells them about this, Michael and Sierra are going to have their fair share of questions about it. 

Especially if their backstory is really going to be what Ashton is planning it to be which is sounding a lot like: ‘we fucked and subsequently fell.’

He whispers, slacking, “oh, shit,” reaching up to massage his hairline. “I can’t believe I’m about to invent an imaginary sex life for myself. That is a whole new level of depressing.”

Ashton gets a huffing laugh out of that. “Take it this way, you can make yourself as good in bed as you want. And, if you want me to, I’ll tell the whole campus it’s eight inches.”

“Yeah, because people will believe that.” Luke looks up at him through his hand, smiling at the joke. “What’re you?”

“Huh?” Ashton blinks. “How long is—?” 

“No!” Luke all but shouts, mortified. “I mean, are you a—” He waves his hand like that will explain anything, voice catching in his throat.

Ashton takes a second to realize and he opens his mouth in an ‘o.’ “I’m a switch. Depends on who I’m with.”

Luke considers him. He tries to sound casual when he asks, strictly for research and continuity purposes only, “So… if you were with me?”

Ashton wets his lips in ponderance before he lets his eyes run over Luke’s body, hovering over every portion of him, hazel eyes doing their rounds like he’s memorizing every turn and edge of Luke’s shoulders and waist and legs. Luke can’t help shifting in his seat, rubbing his thighs together, self-conscious beneath Ashton’s peering gaze, like he’s being evaluated. 

He’s an attractive guy, and he knows that; has been told that. It’s one of the few things he likes about himself because, even though he’s a terrible actor, at least he has big baby blue eyes and blonde curls and a porcelain nose and complexion with soft lips. He’s not handsome, he’s been told, but he’s _pretty_.

The definition of demure if demure were an adjective to describe a man. That was from Lorrie Thompson, and he’s still on the fence of whether or not it was an insult. 

Either way, he knows he’s nice to look at, and—even with the knowledge—he’s worried Ashton will see something he doesn’t like. 

Ashton says, folding his arms as his eyes drift back to Luke’s face like he’s decided, “yeah.”

“Yeah?” Luke mumbles.

“Oh, I’m topping you, sweetheart,” Ashton says, the only option, and Luke hopes he doesn't gulp too loudly. 

“You, uh—” he coughs and covers his mouth with a fist to catch it— “You’re pretty shameless.”

“For sure,” Ashton replies, grinning. “But what would I have to be ashamed of?”

“I guess nothing.” 

Luke is watching how Ashton stands there, all confidence and posture, and he can’t help thinking to himself that no one is going to believe this. No one is going to believe that Ashton Irwin is falling in love with _him_. 

“Any kinks I should know about?” Ashton asks.

“We are not doing kink negotiation right now,” Luke returns strictly because he has to draw a line somewhere and this is only the third time they’re physically hanging out; Ashton is moving at light speed with this whole thing, like he can’t wait to get started. 

“Why not?” Ashton steps up to Luke, standing behind him and he moves his hands over Luke’s shoulders, teasingly gripping onto them like he’s going to give him a massage, and Luke can’t help but notice how large Ashton’s hands are and the way his fingers dig into the juncture of his collarbones. “I need to know what my golden boy’s into. How else am I supposed to please him?”

Luke pulls away from him, a quiet shiver inching down his spine he elects to ignore. “I’m not doing kink negotiation with you. I’m drawing the line.”

“All that means to me is that there _are_ kinks to negotiate,” Ashton replies, smirking, and Luke wants to flick him in the nose and he makes a move to playfully do such, causing Ashton to step back and snicker. “Try it this way, how do I prove to people that I actually know what you like?”

“I like music,” Luke replies, hugging his arms around himself because he doesn’t know what else to do with them. “And, uh, books.”

“You’re so specific.”

“I don’t know!” Luke bemoans, hoping to distract blame from himself. “What about you, huh? What d’you like?”

“I like music too, mainly 70’s or 80’s rock. I like books about running away. I like yoga and meditation. Movies that have happy endings. My favorite color is red, specifically sangria red.” Ashton interrupts himself to whistle, pointing at Luke with a finger gun. “And that reminds me, I like sangria.”

Luke exhales from his chest, fiddling with his fingers in his lap. “I’ll keep all that in mind.”

“So?” Ashton adjusts the bottom of his shirt. “Are we done for today? I’ve got a shit load of homework I need to get on. There’s this goddamn essay for my goddamn film history class and I—Hemmings, I wouldn’t have gone into acting if I’d known it was gonna be full of essays.”

“Hate to break it to you, Ash, the world is filled with essays,” Luke replies, closing his notebook and putting it under his arm. “I’ll, uhm… let myself out.”

“Sounds good.” Ashton holds the bedroom door open for him, bracing himself against the frame, and Luke pauses when he gets into the next room, glancing back 

He mumbles, “I like Frank Ocean, by the way.”

Ashton is taken aback, hazel eyes momentarily pausing on Luke, inviting more explanation without spoken words. He stays propped in the doorframe, body tilting to one side, showing off the curve of his hips. 

“And uh, my favorite color is periwinkle.” Luke wets his lips. “Like uh, the flower or—”

“Your eyes,” Ashton fills in and Luke stops dead in his tracks.

 _Like your eyes_. Jesus fuck. He may be a dreamer, but Ashton is making it a little too easy to be dreamed about. 

Luke swallows. “Yeah… Or my eyes.”

Ashton bids him goodbye with that happy smile in place, and when the door shuts behind him, Luke stands alone in the hallway for a moment, trying to keep himself from blushing again for the hundredth time because of something Ashton Irwin said without thinking.

There are red flags sprouting from the ground like horsemint, but Luke is oblivious to the weeds.

***

Luke meets Michael outside the lecture hall door and Michael asks him, waving him over with a hand, “where’d you dump the body?”

Luke chuckles as he nears. “Didn’t go through with it.”

“Damn.” Michael snaps his fingers. “Guess I’ll have to call my Uncle Vinny and tell him to cancel.”

Luke laughs louder as they start inside, making their way to their seats before class starts. He says conversationally as they walk, “he’s honestly not as bad as I thought he was.”

Michael’s hand freezes on the back of his chair and he tilts his head up to Luke, green eyes the size of small moons. “Sorry, what was that? What did you say? Because it sounded an awful lot like mild acceptance of Ashton Irwin’s existence.”

“I said, he’s not as bad as I thought he was.” Luke sits down, trying to keep himself from fooling around too much in his seat when Michael’s eyes stay trained on him, flabbergasted by the statement. And he has all the right to be. It’s not something Luke would have said a week ago. He feigns confusion when he asks, “What’re you looking at me like that for?”

“Who are you,” Michael demands, “and what have you done with my best friend?”

Luke reaches for his backpack, brushing off the words. “It’s not like we’re soulmates or something now but, yeah, he’s tolerable.”

Michael sinks into his chair, not taking his eyes off Luke for so much as a second. After a quick glance around to make sure no one is listening to them, he leans in close and carefully whispers, “you didn’t really kill him, did you? This isn’t you creating an alibi, right? You know I’ll lie for you in court; you don’t have to protect me.”

“What?” Luke jerks his head over to find a stressed expression on Michael’s face (the sort that indicates he’s serious). “No! I didn’t ki—what the fuck, Mike?”

Michael is quick to raise his hands up, resuming his natural calm. “Only making sure.”

“I was saying he’s not as bad as I thought,” Luke says, pulling his laptop open. “You were right.”

Michael stares at him. 

“Okay, what now?” Luke asks, exasperated. 

“I—” Michael shakes his head, absolute disbelief in his face and his green eyes— “You’ve never… I’ve never been right before.”

“Whelp.” Luke claps him on the back. He hears Ashton’s voice in the back of his head. “First time for everything.”

Michael looks like he’s going to say something else but he doesn’t get the chance before their professor walks in. His eyes find Luke throughout class though, gaze questioning, and Luke hopes it’s not obvious that his palms are sweating and his thoughts are running at a new speed in his head with the fear of discovery. 

But… beneath the worry, there’s a hint of excitement. 

He can do this. 

He really thinks he can.

***

Luke tries to drop clues where he can with his friends, texting Ashton after every successful mission, and Ashton texting him after every one of his.

Ashton’s missions aren’t as well thought out as Luke’s though, it seems, because all Ashton does for his are passively mention to KayKay and Calum that he ‘thinks Luke is hot’ or ‘couldn’t stop staring at Luke’s ass during Scene Study’ to which Luke always reminds, ‘stop talking about me like I’m food, I’m not a goddamn meal’ to which Ashton replied once, ‘then what’re you doing with so much cake? Doesn’t add up’ and Luke stopped arguing.

Luke doesn’t want to go overboard, so his missions are far more subtly charged, especially after he has spent the last year of his life complaining about Ashton to his friends without basis. If he changes things up so drastically so fast, everyone will notice. He wants to be inconspicuous about it.

That means pointing out in conversations with Crystal and Sierra that he hasn’t dated anyone in two years because he’s been so focused on the acting, and that the solitude is really starting to drain him. Maybe he’s ready to date someone again. Maybe at some point, he will be. Maybe he should go on a date.

Sierra keeps offering to hook him up with someone and he keeps declining because, no, that feels wrong. He wants something more organic than that. 

The remarks are always followed by Sierra and Crystal sharing a very knowing glance together, like Luke is the one who’s not in on the joke. 

And it delights him. 

It fucking delights him to no end that they think he’s the one on the outside when in reality, he’s the one with a secret, and he’s got them right where he wants them.

***

Ashton calls him the second he steps out of Chemistry and Luke has to excuse himself so Michael doesn’t hear the conversation.

“Yeah?” he asks, assuming it’s important. 

He can hear chattering on the other side of Ashton’s line in the background when he says, “I told KayKay I think you’ve got great legs, is that still too objectifying?”

Luke glances around to make sure no one is within a hundred feet' distance. “I’m choosing to say no, but you can mention things other than my body when complimenting me, so you know.”

“Okay, I’ll tell her next time that I think you’ve got a nice voice,” Ashton decides and Luke is going to reply but Ashton is shouting across the room, “Cal! Stop! That’s my underwear! Yes, I swear! Look in the tag!”

Luke smiles to himself fondly. 

“Sorry about that.” Ashton returns to the phone. “Bitch is trying to steal my panties.”

Luke sniggers before he asks, hesitant, “do you really think that though?”

“Think what?” Ashton sounds like he’s half preoccupied and Luke can make out the clack of computer keys. “That you sing like a goddamn baby cherub? That your voice is like a tub of honey and I would gladly drown myself in it?”

“Now you’re being a dick,” Luke says, the initial flattery wearing off, and he’s glad Ashton isn’t there to see the way he’s grinning from ear to ear. That might give him the wrong idea. “But, to answer the question, voice compliments are definitely better than ass compliments.”

“Okay.” There’s some clicking. “But telling her I like your voice so much that I wish I could hear it moaning my name; that’s inappropriate right?”

Luke lets out a hard breath. He coughs, “yes. Yeah, that would be inappropriate.”

“Just checking,” Ashton snickers. “Alright. Talk later, okay, babe? Calum, I’m fucking serious if you try to steal my underwear one more goddamn time, I am taking your keys away—”

The call ends abruptly and Luke stands there in the courtyard, phone held to his ear, repeating Ashton’s words in his head. 

Why the fuck are there goosebumps on his arms? 

His teeth are gritted together when he walks back to Michael, who is playing Crossy Road a little too intensely on his phone. 

Without looking up, he asks, “who was that?”

“My mom,” Luke lies. 

Michael glances up and pauses. A smile forms while he turns his phone off. “D’she chew you out again, bud?”

“Huh? No.” Luke tucks his own phone into his back pocket. “Why’d you think that?”

“Well,” Michael says, nudging him with his elbow. “You’re blushing like a tulip.”

***

Thursday morning.

Bright and shiny early. 8 a.m. Scene Study + Technique class. 

Eye bags under blue eyes. 

Not enough time to so much as brush out his fucking curls so they sit in stupid knots on his head. 

Trying not to yawn too loudly or fall asleep mid-stride. 

Luke has decided that Thursdays can suck his absolute dick. He fucking hates Thursdays. 

He is scrubbing a hand through his hair, hoping he can at least comb it out somewhat with his thin fingers when he walks through the door of their class. He starts to head to the back of the room where he usually sits when he notices out of the corner of his eye that Ashton is sitting in the front row waving at him. 

Rubbing the heel of his palm into his eye socket, Luke walks over, asking through a stifled yawn, “Hey, Ash, what’s up?”

“I saved you a seat.” Ashton beams, indicating with a bob of his head to the chair next to him, patting its cushioned seat. 

Luke lowers his hand from where he is rubbing his eye socket. “Why? I have a seat already.”

Ashton reaches up to snag Luke’s sleeve and he pulls Luke down to sit in the chair beside him, keeping his voice lowered when he says, “we need to create rumors.”

Luke whispers back, gently tugging his sleeve away and fixing it, “now who’s taking this too seriously?”

“C’mon, it’s been a week and a half,” Ashton urges, somewhat of a whine. “We need to start getting into character, properly now. That means sitting together in class, flirty remarks, the whole nine. I’m ready to do this.”

“You’re saying your remarks lately _haven’t_ been flirty?” Luke asks. “Fuck, now I’m scared. What’s your definition of _flirty_? You’ve already told me blatantly that you’d top me; how does it get any flirtier?” 

Ashton grins, opening his mouth, and Luke raises a finger to stop him instantaneously because he does _not_ need to hear Ashton expand on that idea in a public classroom. His reaction would not be fit for other’s eyes and he knows that. 

He has to retain at least a shred of dignity when this whole ‘fake dating’ and having a mild attraction to former arch-enemy Ashton Irwin is stripping him of what little he already had.

“Actually, don’t answer that. And our friends still don’t know,” Luke replies and he thinks they must look like a couple of idiots, hunched over and whispering together in the front row of the auditorium. 

“Yeah, I have a plan for that,” Ashton says and Luke wants to ask more about what his supposed plan is but he doesn’t get the chance as Dale walks away from where he was standing at his podium to get their presentation up and running, prompting Luke and Ashton to split apart from their conspiracy huddle. 

He starts to walk to the center of the stage when he notices Luke sitting in the front row beside Ashton, scooted closer than would be normal, and he slows his stride, remarking coolly, “Hemmings, nice of you to join us at the front of the class today. Any special reason for the seat change?” 

Luke swallows, sending a glance to Ashton at his side who doesn’t offer any help. “Uh. Thought I’d hear better.”

Dale makes an approving hum and turns away. 

“Oh, and uh—” Ashton, unfazed by the interaction that made Luke’s heart rate raise, bends over to shuffle beside his backpack— “I got you something.”

“Huh?” Luke whispers, keeping an eye on Dale, worried about getting in trouble. 

Ashton doesn’t answer with words however, offering the foam coffee cup he’s holding over as explanation enough, flashing a bright grin as he does so. Luke regards the cup for a number of long beats before he peeks at Ashton, eyebrows shooting to his hairline. 

“Wait, what?” he asks. 

“I know how fucked up you are on Thursdays,” Ashton answers, holding the coffee over Luke’s lap. “You look half close to death.”

Luke continues to stare at the cup in his hand.

Ashton shakes it at him and Luke can hear the liquid beat the sides of the foam prison. Ashton asks, “You gonna take it or not? I’ll drink it myself if I have to; it’s got whip cream.”

“Please, no, don't. I want it.”

Luke takes it from him in one swift motion, throwing back a deep swig of it, not caring that it’s hot or not, and letting out a satisfied sigh after, wiping his mouth of the foamy residue, the hot feeling of the drink rolling around his insides, warming him up, and willing his eyelids to open more than halfway. 

He breathes out, content, “damn, that’s good. Thank you so much, seriously.”

Ashton laughs, replying next to Luke’s ear so only the two of them hear it, “what else are fake boyfriends for?”

When he leans back into his chair, he not so discreetly hangs his arm around the back of Luke’s shoulders (causing Luke’s brain to short circuit for a split second) and Luke doesn’t miss the way the girl sitting behind them lets out a breath of shock before whispering something to the girl sitting next to her who whispers something right back. 

If rumors were what Ashton wanted, they’re what he’s getting.

***

“Okay. What’s your plan for telling friends?” Luke asks, cracking his fingers as he walks across Ashton’s carpet on Friday afternoon, continuing to crack his back before he sits down on the couch, which he is starting to quite like. It’s a good fucking couch, better than the one they have in his own dorm. Michael was the one who bought their couch, and he has shit taste.

“You might not like it,” Ashton informs, dropping his bag off at the door on his way to the half-kitchen. 

“For future reference,” Luke replies, leaning his head back against the cushion and closing his eyes, “that’s a really shitty way to start a plan proposal.”

“You want a beer?” Ashton asks while rummaging in his fridge. 

“I don’t drink,” Luke calls back, keeping his eyes shut. “Where’s Calum?”

“Out with this week’s flavor of choice. He’s been feeling brunettes lately.” There’s some clinking from the fridge. “Some guy named Nick, I think? Or maybe it’s Roy again. If it is, that’ll be the third time this month and that’s unheard of. Yeah, I don’t know for sure. He’s getting laid either way, so good for him. I have milk if you want.”

“Unless you have cookies to go with it, I’ll pass. Who the fuck would drink plain milk?” Luke shifts to rest his head against the arm of the couch, nestling deeper. Fuck, he’s so tired. “Are you a serial killer?”

“Didn’t realize I was fake dating a milk-hater, Christ.” Clatters ring from his side of the dorm as he continues to fumble through his fridge. “I’ve got lemonade too, and some Gatorade if that’s—”

“Lemonade!” Luke exclaims, shooting to sit upright, all forms of nestling forgotten, and Ashton chortles to himself. 

“Lemonade it is, your highness,” Ashton sings as he retrieves a bottle of lemonade and a beer can for himself, walking back to the couch where Luke is sitting upright, reaching out his hands for the beverage. 

When Ashton hands it over, Luke accepts the bottle with an excited peep that makes Ashton smile. 

He says, teasingly, “you are… so small.”

“I’m 6’2,” Luke counters, popping the cap of his lemonade. He sighs before he takes a drink, simply holding it in his lap and staring down at it. He says, “You literally don’t understand how much this means to me.”

“You’re right, I don’t. It’s a lemonade.” Ashton sits on the couch beside him, cracking open his own drink which is canned Blue Ribbon, and taking a sip. 

“My High School drama teacher used to make me lemonade whenever I went to her house,” Luke tells him, taking his first drink of the bitter-sweet drink and letting out a deep breath right after in contentment because God Almighty, that’s good. That was exactly what he needed. 

He’s needed that for weeks. 

Ashton is smiling at him from behind his beer. “That’s sweet. I like that.”

“Yeah.” Luke continues to drink at it before he leans forward to set it on the glass table, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Okay. Back to business. Tell me about your plan.”

“Right, my plan,” Ashton agrees, setting his own drink aside. He puts his fingers together as he sits back. “So, we’re fucking.”

Luke looks up. “We’re _huh_?”

“Not actually. Obviously.” Ashton sinks against his respective side of the couch, toeing off his shoes onto the ground. “But this is our first time. Today. On our timeline for our relationship; this is the first time we’re having sex.”

“Wish you told me that earlier before I came over,” Luke mumbles, thinking about how Ashton says the words 'we' and ‘fucking’ while settling into his own corner of the sofa. “I would have worn something nicer.”

Ashton says, “Here’s my plan; you ready?”

“I’ve been ready.”

“So we fuck tonight.” Ashton reaches back over for his beer, taking a quick drink. “For detailing, you can say we did it in my bed, maybe we even… took a shower together after the fact? Maybe I gave you a blowjob in said shower or we went a second round. Really, the possibilities are endless. I assume it’s fantastic; we both had world-changing orgasms, and know we’re going to do it again. I mean, sex as good as ours isn’t something you can let go of.”

Luke stifles a snort with his hand to show that he knows Ashton is trying to be funny and he likes it when Ashton is funny but… but, fuck, now he’s thinking. And it’s a bad thing because he should not be thinking about what he’s thinking about. 

His brain is entertaining visions of Ashton in the shower now—God help him—with water running in rivulets down his face and his shoulders and his chest, smoothing back wet honey-colored hair with those long fingers of his. 

_Fuck_. 

Because now the image is building itself in his head bit by bit. The image of Ashton—soaking wet Ashton—sinking to his knees to the shower floor. Ashton’s pink cupid’s bow lips smiling up at him, hazel eyes hooded. Ashton’s hands on his hips, pulling him in. Or, pressing him back against a shower wall or a sliding glass shower door, bare skin right on him. Ashton’s _mouth_ on him. Oh, God, not— 

“When you leave tonight,” Ashton continues, pulling Luke out of his daze, brain foggy with shower steam, “you get redressed, and, oh no, you’ve accidentally worn _my_ shirt home instead of your own.”

Luke mocks shock, attempting to clear his head. “How clumsy of me.” 

Ashton takes a sip of his beer, speaking around the rim of the can. “And, when you change out of the shirt after realizing your mistake, your roommates are gonna see a pretty little hickey sitting on your neck.”

He taps the crook of his own throat for emphasis. 

That makes Luke stop for a second and he opens his mouth before closing it before opening it again, wondering if he heard that right. “Uh, yeah, that all sounds fine, I guess, but uh… a hickey? Wh-where would I be… Who is giving me this hickey?”

“Me,” Ashton replies like it’s the only answer.

Luke nods, waving a hand. “For sure, in the timeline-fake-dating universe but I mean in real li—”

“Me,” Ashton reiterates and Luke stares at him. 

He forces, “You—?”

“It’s a fucking hickey.” Ashton sips at his beer. “All I have to do is suck on your neck for like two minutes and then it’s done with.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s all.” Luke lets out a puff. “Are you serious?”

“In that case,” Ashton says, drinking calmly while easing back, “you come up with a better plan. Let’s hear it, Hemmings. Wow me.”

Luke gawks. “Uh.”

Ashton tilts his head. “Nothing? No plans?”

Luke stares across the couch at him for a couple of seconds and… fuck, he’s got nothing. He’s got absolutely nothing and Ashton’s plan makes the most sense. And a hickey will be the easiest, most realistic evidence to prove to his friends this is happening. It’s a good plan, all things considered, even if it’s… fucking bold.

Then again, everything about Ashton is fucking bold.

Luke holds up a finger, and he can’t believe he’s giving in to all of this so easily. “If you _slobber_ on my neck, Ashton, I swear to God—”

Ashton laughs sharply. “Honey, you understand that I’ve had sex before, right? I’m not gonna slobber on your neck; I know what I’m doing.”

“Yeah, yeah. We’ll see about that.” Luke shakes his head, collecting his lemonade and taking a long swig of it. He gestures to Ashton with the bottle. “I need you to know right now, the only reason I’m agreeing to this is because you brought me both coffee and lemonade, and that puts me forever in your favor.” 

And because a small part of him wants to see those pink lips in action.

“Good to know I can bribe you with beverages,” Ashton says before he leans to set his beer down, licking the alcohol off his lips. “Scoot forward.”

“For what?” Luke asks, staying nestled back in the corner of the cushions with his lemonade sitting on his stomach, holding both hands around it. 

Ashton asks, sitting up, “you are one difficult motherfucker, y’know that?”

“I’ve been told once or twice.” Luke sips his lemonade. “Why do I need to move forward?”

“So I can sit behind you,” Ashton replies. 

He says everything like it’s the truth. Every word out of his mouth, Luke believes. And it drives him crazy because… Where is the man’s hesitancy? His uncertainty? His _fear_? Does he even know the emotion at all?

Luke waves a hand. “And you need to sit behind me in order to—”

Ashton says in a voice that oozes exasperation, “I need to sit behind you when I give you the hickey _in order to_ simulate that I’m fucking you from behind. If I’m leaving a visible hickey on your shoulder, it’s gonna be because I was bending you over you something.”

As though it’s so fucking obvious and not the most bombshell-dropping thing he’s said so far, sending Luke’s heart down the first express elevator right into his shoes.

Luke’s jaw falls to the floor with it, his cheeks burning like a flame has ignited beneath his skin, seeping through his freckles. He stutters, “I—You—”

Ashton’s pink cupid’s bow stretches out to a grin. “You are so fucking cute when you’re flustered, Hemmings.”

“I told you, don’t objectify me,” Luke reminds, forcing the words from his mouth in a strained tone as blood rushes into his face. 

Ashton asks, “You gonna scoot forward or not there, lovely?”

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Luke whispers as he carefully moves forward on the couch to sit on the edge, drinking his lemonade with wide eyes, hoping the way his hands are trembling isn’t obvious, shaking his head in absolute bewilderment with himself. _You’re acting like a fucking virgin. Get it together_. “This has got to be a sign I’m losing my mind.”

“Why’re you acting like I’m old and ugly or something?” Ashton asks as he moves across the couch towards Luke. “I am a fit twenty-two-year-old man. There are worse things that could be sucking on your neck.”

“And those are?” Luke asks and Ashton pinches him on the thigh now that he’s close enough to do so, causing Luke to jump, barking out, “Hey!”

“Be glad I’m not a leech. Or a vampire,” Ashton replies while he settles behind Luke, wasting no time in pressing up against him, chest flush to Luke’s back, swinging his legs on either side of Luke’s so it’s almost like Luke is sitting in his lap. 

Luke holds his breath, feeling Ashton shift against him to get comfortable and, okay… it feels nice. Ashton’s body heat is heavy through Luke’s back, and he’s _soft_ , wearing this large cotton hoodie and worn blue jeans, and Luke doesn’t miss the way Ashton’s hand grazes his bare arm with his knuckles as he moves. 

“Let’s not get too sexy, huh?” Luke says without looking over his shoulder for fear their faces would be too close and he’d have to kiss him. “Can I drink my lemonade while you do this?”

Ashton asks, his thighs warm against the side of Luke’s own. “Would you drink a lemonade if I were fucking you?”

“Depends on how bad you are and how bored I am,” Luke replies. 

He hopes he sounds nonchalant. Hopes it’s not too obvious that his heart is pounding in his chest against his ribcage, begging to be let out. 

It doesn’t matter if he has a crush on Ashton or not (which, to clarify, he doesn’t) this is fucking sexual. This is a fucking sexual moment; anyone would feel the way he does right now. He is completely justified in how he feels. He consoles himself, anyone would feel this way. 

There is a fucking attractive man pressed up against him from behind, thigh to thigh, chest to back, long fingers brushing against his bare arms, talking about _fucking_ him from behind while breathing on his neck in preparation of sucking on it. 

Luke’s heart is allowed to beat like this; he only hopes Ashton can’t feel it through his spine.

Ashton laughs at the joke before he says, “trust me when I say, you wouldn’t be bored.” 

Luke feels his long fingers moving over his shoulder to the collar of his shirt, where Ashton tucks his fingers under the fabric. 

Ashton says, breath against the nape of Luke’s neck, causing his hair to stand up, “I’m gonna move this to make it easier, is that okay? Tell me if anything isn’t.”

“It’s fantastic,” Luke deadpans and that earns him another pinch to his thigh that makes him twitch, but this time Ashton doesn’t remove his hand after tweaking the skin, and he instead lets it rest on top of Luke’s slacks. 

He can feel heat sinking from Ashton’s wide palm through the fabric to his thigh.

Luke almost wants to tell him to move it—because the heat and the feeling and the length of his fingers is a little much to deal with—but he can’t even form the words to try.

Ashton laughs as he pushes Luke’s shirt collar aside, holding it away from his neck, and the pads of his fingers are against the bare skin of Luke’s shoulder. He hums quietly to himself like he’s thinking. “Okay, wait… I have to make this realistic.”

“It’s a hickey!” Luke says. “You are literally about to suck on my neck; how could it be _un_ realistic?”

“It’s a mid-fuck hickey,” Ashton elaborates, “there’s a difference with those. I can’t suck once and call it a day; there’s a craft to this.”

“Are you fucking—” He’s going to ask if Ashton is serious but he doesn’t get the chance as Ashton interrupts him. 

“So, okay, first—after prep and all that—I’d enter you.” His lips are on the crook of Luke’s neck with no warning, smooth and slick, cold from the beer he’d been drinking and sending a fierce shiver down Luke’s spine that makes his body go rigid. “And then I’d stop; check with you to make sure you’re okay. You okay, Hemmings?”

He kisses Luke’s skin again, this time with his mouth opening up more and inching further up Luke’s neck, closer to the base of his ear. 

Luke chokes out, “A play by play? Really?”

“It’ll help my process,” Ashton replies, kissing below Luke’s ear again before he moves back to where his neck meets the line of his shoulder, “is it gonna bother you? I can do it in my head if you want.”

“No,” Luke replies and the tiny voice in his brain screeches, _what! What! Did you just give this man permission to narrate how he would fuck you!_ “It’s okay.”

He can feel Ashton smile against the skin of his neck. “Uh-huh. So, assuming you’re all good, I’d keep going. And when I bottom out, I’d—”

He bites into Luke’s shoulder abruptly, teeth sinking into the flesh—not enough to break skin but enough to sting—and Luke lets out a noise of surprise that shoots up from his chest and into the air. 

He tries to cover it by saying, “ow! What the fuck! I thought you said you weren’t a vampire!”

“Sorry,” Ashton apologizes in a mumble, and soothes his tongue over the spot he’s bitten before opening his mouth over top of it and sucking, and Luke chews so hard on his bottom lip that he’s scared he might puncture it through with his teeth. Ashton continues on, “And then, while I’m fucking you, I’d…”

He moves his lips over the crook of Luke’s neck, mouthing over the skin, every press of his touch hot and wet, and Luke doesn’t miss the way his hand—which is still sitting on top of his leg—shifts so his fingers ghost Luke’s inner thigh. 

Luke is holding his breath so tightly in the center of his chest that he’s afraid he might pop, trying not to make a single sound because, fuck, that feels _good_.

“And, uh—” Ashton’s mouth is dragging against burning, prickling skin, sucking wherever he chooses to stop— “I guess, we’ll say I come first, and when I do that—”

He sinks his teeth into Luke’s shoulder again, harder this time, with rougher intent, and Luke can’t keep the groan back that tugs up from his throat. 

He clamps a hand over his mouth the moment he does it and doesn’t miss Ashton’s chuckle against his throat as he removes his teeth, momentarily sucking on the place he bit to ease the pain before he does.

“Did I hit a nerve?” he asks against Luke’s shoulder, feigning innocence. 

Luke forces through a clenched jaw, “I’m sensitive.”

“I can tell.” Ashton laughs, untucking himself from Luke’s spine and moving back to the other side of the couch. He cranes his neck to examine his handiwork on Luke’s neck before he fixes on a toothy grin. “That’s gonna be a nice one. I’m nothing if not a good kisser.”

“I will admit,” Luke replies, reaching a hand up to massage his own fingers over the hot skin where Ashton has made his mark, “you’re not bad.”

“I’ll take it.” Ashton grabs his beer from the table. Luke doesn’t miss the way he licks his lips before he drinks, the way they glisten in the light from nothing more than the kisses and bites he left on Luke’s shoulder, and Luke has to swallow thickly to avoid his brain from swimming in any more gutters today. 

He doesn’t have a crush on Ashton or anything, and that’s the truth, but fuck… Fuck, that was kind of— 

“So what’s your plan for telling Calum and KayKay?” he asks, drinking anxiously at his lemonade while rubbing his shoulder where he can still feel the lingering touch of Ashton’s tongue and teeth, hot and damp and aching against his fingers.

“Getting excited, huh?” Ashton grins around his beer. “Let’s focus on one thing at a time, okay, Hemmings? Don’t wanna overwork ourselves.”

“Right.” Luke nods. “Yeah… Sure. Sounds good.”

He can feel Ashton’s eyes glued to his shoulder and he shifts on the couch, bumping his knees together as he tries to get comfortable. But it’s not like he can with hazel eyes piercing his own purpled skin.

“What?” he asks finally, glancing to his side.

“Nothing,” Ashton replies, drinking as he reclines fully back, tearing his eyes away like he never cared. “S’just… you look good with me on you. Wouldn’t mind leaving a couple more.”

He flashes Luke a fast, smug smile, cheering his beer to the air so casually, and Luke once again turns a violent shade of pink in the face, diverting his blue eyes in a hurry to his lemonade.

 _Fuck_.

Oh fuck, what’s he gotten himself into?


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Allies, Allies, Allies !!

Ashton offers to let Luke go through his entire closet to pick a shirt to steal and, ultimately, Luke decides on a striped long-sleeve that he’s never seen Ashton wear once before and knows Sierra will recognize doesn't belong to Luke. 

Especially on account that the shirt is too wide, making Luke look smaller in it than he is. It also has a fairly open collar, exposing the beginnings of his shoulders so the hickey will be noticeable enough to bring attention. 

God forbid Ashton did all that hard work for nothing. 

Luke leaves his own shirt with Ashton, tucked away into the bedroom dresser drawer as if it belongs there, hidden alongside Ashton’s own clothes. It’s strangely domestic to see their clothes nudged together like that and makes Luke's head hurt for a moment before he clears visions of classic-home-life with Ashton Irwin from his brain. He has an overactive imagination.

They say goodbye with traded winks while Ashton wishes him good luck on his acting skills, saying, “remember to act like a person and it’ll all be fine.”

Easy for him to say. Luke can barely act like a functioning person when he’s _not_ performing. 

He hadn’t even thought about his fucking acting until Ashton said something outright about it; too preoccupied with the heated bruise on his shoulder, aching every time he chooses to dance his fingers over it, and the new shirt he’s wearing that’s too big and too soft and smells too much like Ashton. 

But now that he’s standing outside his dorm, staring up at the door, he realizes in horror that he’s going to have to actually act now. He doesn’t know what his friends are going to say to him and he’s going to have to improvise based on it, and _lie_ to them, and think on his toes. Worst of all, he has to be believable while doing it. 

He’s terrible at improv and worse at being human. 

This whole thing was such a bad idea. What was he even _thinking_ when he agreed to this? He should turn around and go back to Ashton’s dorm and hide in Ashton’s dresser along with his shirt. He should slink away and hide in a drawer where no one else can make him do something stupid or trick him into anything that he doesn’t—

The door opens to reveal a grumpy Michael, complete with a hole adorned t-shirt and messy hair, and Luke remembers that he’d already knocked a moment ago so running away now would be a little stupid. Damn his reflexes and ingrained muscle memory. 

Michael says, without a second thought, gesturing for him to come inside, “you’re fucking late, man. Jesus.”

“Late?” Luke wonders as he walks inside, so hyper-aware of the fact that he’s wearing a shirt that isn’t his own which is hardly concealing a dark hickey forming on his skin from the mouth of a man he’s supposed to hate. 

“Yeah,” Michael answers, bebopping to the center of the room, swinging his arms at his sides, “we went ahead and started without you.”

Luke glances at the coffee table and lets out an automatic groan at the sight of the game spread across the surface. “No. No, God, please. Not fucking Scattergories. You know I hate that game.”

“That’s because you’re weak,” Sierra grunts without so much as glancing up at him, scribbling answers on her tiny sheet with a feathered pen, blocking Crystal from being able to see with her palm bared over the paper. “And you weren’t here when we voted on what to play, so.”

“Sierra always wins,” Luke complains as he walks into the room, dropping his bag beside the couch. “You can’t play Scattergories with an English major; that’s not fair.”

“Hey,” Sierra retaliates, still writing at a furious pace, checking the timer, “we play charades with you all the Goddamn time.”

“That’s different,” he protests.

“It’s not different,” Crystal replies, her grey eyes trained on Sierra’s paper, trying to cheat off her answers like she always does. She shoots her eyes up, half a smile on her glossy lips, and says ‘hi’ to Luke before she looks back at Sierra’s paper. 

It takes a split second before her eyes snap open and she jerks her head back to look at him. 

Luke feels himself freeze. 

Leave it to the women to notice first.

“What are you wearing?” she asks and Sierra is quick to shoot her own head up, ringlets of brown hair whipping into her face. 

She exclaims, noticing what Crystal has pointed out within a fraction of a second, “Woah! Hold on. That’s not the shirt you left in.”

 _Act. Act. Act._ Luke’s brain is sprinting around the inside of his skull.

“Uh—” He shifts, glancing down at himself and the striped shirt that is most definitely not his own that smells like citrus— “What do you mean? Yes, it is.”

_Wow. Smooth, there, Luke. You’re such a good actor. You absolute fucking moron._

Sierra is off her feet in a second, her flowered socks almost slipping on the wooden floor with how fast she moves, abandoning the game at the table as the timer runs out. 

Michael, meanwhile, is standing beside Luke in absolute bewilderment, darting his green eyes over Luke’s entire body like he’s trying to figure out what in the hell the girls are talking about. He hasn’t seemed to connect the dots yet.

Sierra reaches out for him, snapping her fingers in what can only be described as an act of aggression. “Give it to me.”

“Give what?” Luke starts to back up, almost stumbling over his own feet. 

“The shirt!” she demands. “Whose fucking shirt is that, Lucas? That is not your shirt.”

“It’s not?” Michael asks, eyes flying over the piece of clothing as he puts two and two together.

“Yes, it is!” Luke lies, backing up towards the door—a dead-end—bracing his hands behind himself. 

“Give me the shirt,” Sierra echoes, trying again to grab at him. “Whose shirt is this?”

Crystal is right beside her, running her eyes up and down the length of the striped garment and she mimes some slight disgust like she doesn’t approve of the pattern. “Is that a guy’s shirt? Luke, are you wearing another guy’s shirt?”

Michael’s eyes bug and Luke’s worried they are going to pop right out of his head. “What! Wait a fucking second. You’re wearing a guy’s shirt?”

“No, I’m not!” Luke falls into the door, pressing against it. 

They’re kind of scaring him, crowding around him like vultures so he can’t escape. He didn’t expect them to be this attack-ready so fast. Granted, they are his best friends in the world and he never lies to them about anything and he never hides things from them and he hasn’t been with anyone intimately in… 

Fuck, has it been two years now? There’s no way it’s been almost two years since he’s dated someone. Oh no. Oh no, this is going to be huge to them. 

He and Ashton may have assumed this was a smaller deal than it was. This seems like a big deal. 

He flounders, stress starting to set in that he’s in too far over his head, lying, “It’s my shirt.”

“Then you won’t mind me taking a look at it, will you?” Sierra asks, narrowing her eyes. 

Luke wraps his arms around himself in protection, gripping the sides of Ashton’s shirt in his balled-up fists, floored by the implication. “I’m not gonna take my shirt off for you. What the hell, Thao?”

“No, I don’t mean you have to strip down,” Sierra replies, grimacing, as Crystal says, “Please, God, don’t. No one wants that.”

“Ouch.” He touches his chest, looking at the blonde. “I’m wounded, Crys. That one hurt. I’d be a great stripper.”

“No one’s disputing that. If it’s really your shirt, you won’t care if I look at the tag in the collar, right?” Sierra asks, drawing his attention back to her and making him pinch the shirt’s fabric tighter in his fists to hold it safe to him. “Because we all know you buy mediums. But this shirt looks like a large. And if it’s a large, then we’ll know that it’s not your shirt, won’t we?”

Michael is staring at her with the same shock Luke is, her eyes piercing like she’s a predator on the hunt, and Michael shuffles back. He mumbles to Luke, “fuck, she’s _scary_.”

“Give me the shirt,” Sierra repeats, voice clipped.

Luke leans his back against the door. “Thao, maybe you should think about—”

He doesn’t have time to finish the sentence as Sierra has drawn close enough to snag him by the collar and—because she is much shorter than he is—hauled him down to be level with her so she can read the tag that is sewn into the shirt’s neckline.

Luke has to fight everything in himself not to smirk when she pulls it to the side of his neck, revealing the large purple stain on his otherwise pale skin Ashton’s mouth has left.

“Oh my _God_ ,” she cries, pulling the shirt away even further to expose the whole mark, dragging him so far down that he almost falls to his knees, her eyes flying open, and Michael and Crystal are quick to do the same, voicing their shock in loud exclamations and hurried steps forward to get a better look. 

“Is that a _hickey_?” Crystal slaps a hand over her mouth. “It’s huge.”

“Lemme fucking see that.” Michael grabs Luke’s collar, pulling him away from Sierra, and Luke makes a small sound of protest, arguing that Michael is going to stretch the fabric out, but Michael isn’t listening to him, too busy staring at the bruise. “This looks like a Goddamn battle wound.”

“No, it does not,” Luke replies, pulling away from him and fixing his collar to hide the mark once more. 

His gut is rippling with excitement. Is lying supposed to be this fun? It’s not the same high as performing yet, no spotlight or larger-than-life feeling but it’s this more… _subtle_ enjoyment. The fizzling of secrets in his veins. The fact that no one knows the truth but him and Ashton. 

“Who gave that to you?” Crystal asks, her palm still hovering over her open mouth. 

Luke fidgets where he is standing. 

He doesn’t know quite what to say to that, in reality. Does he blurt out that it was Ashton? Does he pretend not to know? He wants them to figure out it’s Ashton but he doesn’t want to make it too obvious; that may be suspicious. He needs them to come to the conclusion themselves. What if he— 

Sierra gasps and all eyes turn to her. She has both palms clamped over her mouth and from behind her small hands comes her muffled voice. “You said you were going to Ashton’s.”

Crystal inhales.

“Are you trying to say that _Ashton_ did that? Like Ashton Irwin, Ashton? Luke’s mortal fucking enemy for the last year?” Michael forces out a hacking laugh. “Listen, I know we all joked about Luke having a crush on him but do you think he really—”

He turns back to see Luke peering at him nervously, eyebrows arched up and a hesitant smile forming on his lips, nothing but expectance in his gaze that Michael will figure it out for himself, and Michael’s face instantly drains. 

“No,” he breathes. “No, you fucking didn’t, you whore.”

“He did,” Crystal says. 

Sierra continues to hold her hand against her mouth. “He did.”

Luke rubs his shoulder where the hickey rests, his skin burning. He repeats, quieter, hopeful it toes the line of vulnerability, “I did.”

Except that he didn’t. 

Michael steps back from him, at a loss. “You actually _fucked_... Ashton Irwin? For real?”

“From the looks of it,” Crystal mumbles to herself like she doesn’t mean for the words to breach the air, “Ashton Irwin fucked him.”

Michael lets out a strangled sound, pressing his hands against his ears. “Oh my God! You had hate sex.”

That sends Luke into confusion, and he questions, “Sorry? What was that? I had what now?” 

“Hate sex,” Michael repeats, aghast. “You had fucking violent as shit hate sex with Ashton Irwin. Don’t you lie to me, Lucas. Are you serious? What’s gotten into you?”

“ _Hate se_ —” Luke blinks rapidly, trying to clear his thoughts, and all he can come up with to say is— “No, I don’t hate Ashton anymore—Wait a fucking second, Sierra had hate sex with that Alan guy.” 

“Alex,” Crystal corrects.

“Whatever!” Luke throws a hand up, hoping they can duck into a new conversation while he tries to figure out what the fuck to do with this development. “It happened!”

“That wasn’t hate sex,” Sierra returns, her eyes glued to Luke’s shoulder where the hickey is half hiding beneath Ashton’s stolen shirt collar, angry and purple, imprinted over skin that hasn’t been anything but clear for two years. 

When was the last time Luke had a hickey? He didn’t even have them frequently when he was real-dating people. What in God’s name was he thinking when he let Ashton do that to him? What about Ashton Irwin had persuaded him this was reasonable without even trying to? 

“That was hate _of_ sex,” Sierra prattles on, “because he _sucked_ at it and didn’t know how to let a girl finish. And that’s why I date women now. Because I deserve it. Plus, this isn’t about me. I can’t believe you fucked him, Luke. I mean, I know I said he was hot and all but for you to—” 

“I can’t believe it either,” Crystal says, and she looks sad for some reason. 

Is it sadness? Luke doesn’t like having it directed at him. Whatever it is makes her grey eyes bigger and sweeter, like they’re apologizing to him for something. He doesn't know what that something is though. 

She mumbles, “That’s so unlike you, Luke.”

And yeah, that’s true. That’s undeniable.

Luke has never had a one-night stand or a hookup in his fucking life. Ever. He’s had offers (plenty of offers) but it’s not in his nature. Almost every one of his relationships has lasted longer than four months. When Luke loves people, he means it. So, casually fucking around isn’t normal for him. Hickeys like this and forgetting to wear the right shirt isn’t normal for him. 

Someone like Ashton Irwin isn’t _normal_ for him. 

He knew his friends were going to notice that. Fuck. Oh fuck. Why did he let Ashton convince him to do this? What an idiot he is sometimes.

He’s starting to sweat, so he wipes the fronts of his hands on his pants before fiddling with the bottom hem of Ashton’s shirt. It smells like the citrusy cologne that Luke had taken note of in his bedroom earlier. Sort of lemony, orangey. Sort of makes his nose itch. Ashton doesn’t smell exactly like his cologne, or from what Luke could tell when the man was pressed up against Luke’s spine on the couch. 

It wasn’t like Luke was taking deep breaths in and _trying_ to smell Ashton during that interaction. He had been sort of distracted by the wet mouth on his flesh and the dragging of teeth to entertain what Ashton had smelled like.

But thinking about it… there had been a hint of that lemony cologne. Luke wonders what the brand is. He is so busy clumsily playing with the bottom of the shirt that he misses when Michael asks him a question. 

He peeks up. “Sorry, what?”

All eyes are on him, and the shock has melted into worry in every pair. Luke darts his gaze from one to the next. 

“Uh?” He swallows. “What is it? Why’re you all looking at me like that?”

“He didn’t—” Michael makes a concerned sound from the back of his throat, glancing at Sierra and Crystal to make sure they’ll back him up— “Pressure you or anything? Because you know if he did, I will end his fucking life.”

“Woah, no!” Luke is quick to raise his hands, blue eyes widening because _no_. He never thought that would have been a possible conclusion their minds would jump to and he says as much in a shocked tone, “He didn’t do anything like that! It was completely consensual. Oh my God, _no_. He would never do something like that.”

Not that Luke knows Ashton well enough to testify to that. But from what he does know, he thinks it’s safe to say Ashton isn’t a bad guy. Even if Luke has spent the last portion of a year and a half claiming that he is. 

Michael slacks his shoulders, letting out a heave of relief, but his worried expression remains. He chews at his bottom lip. “Can… can I see the hickey again?”

Luke allows him to walk over, slipping his hand from where it’s trapping the shirt in place and allows Michael access to pull the fabric away so he can examine the mark again in all its dark, vibrant glory and let out an exhale of awe.

“Wow,” he mumbles, shaking his head back and forth, pressing his fingers to the sides of it and the bruise is still fresh enough that the contact makes Luke wince, causing Michael to wince with him. “He went to fucking town, huh? No hesitation here. What is he, part octopus? This is a suction mark.”

“It’s not that bad,” Luke argues, cheeks warming in embarrassment. He makes sure not to let his eyes meet Michael’s.

“Luke,” Michael hisses, fingers light against the bruise, “It has _teeth marks_ in it.”

Luke wants to curse Ashton for this. And he will, the second he sees him again. He’s going to take Ashton by the shoulders, shake him, and say, _next time, don’t bite me so fucking hard; you’re not a dog, I’m not a bone. I don’t care that it was sexy_ (and it was sexy...), _it concerns people. You are worrying my friends. What the hell were you thinking?_

“It’s no big deal,” Luke tries again, hopeful he can convince them that it isn’t a mark caused by hate sex (even though it’s a mark caused by no sex). 

He hadn’t even considered that they might think it was hate sex. Goddammit.

“How did this even happen?” Sierra wonders. “You said you were going over there to read lines. How does reading lines turn into _that_?”

She gestures at the hickey that Michael is still showing off to the whole room and Luke takes the time to glance down at it, because he hasn’t seen it since Ashton first sucked it into his skin, and it takes every ounce of self-control in his body not to shout out, _holy fuck!_

Because, _holy fuck_ , that’s a big bruise and there are perfect indentions of teeth dug into Luke’s skin surrounded by purpling flesh, perhaps two or three inches in size. No fucking wonder they think it’s hate sex. 

That’s a hate sex hickey. 

“It’s hard to explain,” Luke tries, voice high, nudging Michael away so he can fix his collar over the purple mark, trying to get over the shock of what it actually looks like. 

And yeah, it is hard to fucking explain because there’s nothing _to_ explain because nothing happened. But he has to make them think something happened. But… he has to make them think that the something that happened that didn’t really happen didn't happen like they seem to think it happened.

“Try,” Crystal replies. 

“Uh—” He looks from her to Sierra to Michael, desperate. He doesn’t know what the fuck to do. He shrugs pathetically. “It just sort of… happened.”

“How does something like that ‘sort of happen’?” Michael retorts. “What, you were in the middle of a recitation and accidentally tripped and fell on his dick and, in his surprise, he decided to munch on your shoulder and fuck you like an animal?”

Luke presses his hands to his cheeks, hoping he can push down the heat that is rising to them again. He mumbles into his hands, “he didn’t… fuck me like an animal.”

“Sorry, what was that?” Michael asks, cupping a hand behind his ear. “Couldn’t quite make that out, Lukey. Are you trying to tell me a hickey like that came from something _other_ than brutal hate sex with your arch-nemesis?”

“It wasn’t hate sex,” Luke insists, keeping his voice small. He feels like it’s raised at least an octave. “And he’s not my _enemy_ anymore. It was—”

Fuck, what was it?

 _Improv, Luke, improv. Use your brain, man. Or, pretend that you have one, at least_.

“We were going through the scene together and—” Luke shrugs his shoulders towards his ears, squirming in his skin— “And, I don’t know, we had a moment and one thing lead to another and when he asked if, y’know, I wanted to… It just sort of… _happened_.”

When he looks up, all eyes are focused on him. 

He lets out a sharp sigh. “C’mon, guys, stop looking at me like that. I’m not some delicate flower you need to chaperone. I should be able to have… rough… sex every now and again, if I want to.” 

It didn’t even sound convincing to his own ears. He can’t even say the word ‘rough’ without flinching. But it’s so… impersonal. Everything about the sex they’re describing is impersonal.

“No, you shouldn’t,” Michael says. “You have been talking about how much you hate this guy for a year and now suddenly you’re happy riding his dick? When you haven’t dated anyone for, what, going on like two years now? I know we all thought you had a crush but… But that hickey is—Sounds like this guy’s corrupting you.”

“I’m not a virgin; I can’t be _corrupted_ , you fuck,” Luke snaps, and now he’s getting a little bit irritated with his friends and this whole situation. He folds his arms, raising his chin up to simulate confidence, even though he has none. “I’m twenty years old, Mike, I’m allowed some fun sex if I want it.”

“Since when do _you_ think of hate sex as ‘fun?’” Crystal wonders, everything about her spelling out the word ‘skeptical,’ down to the way she drums her fingernails on her forearm to a steady beat. “That’s more Sierra’s brand.”

“It was not hate sex!” Sierra all but shouts. “It was hate _of_ sex! How many times do we need to go over it!”

“And mine isn’t either,” Luke tacks on. “Ashton and I didn’t have hate sex. Let’s clarify that now. It was not hate sex. We had… _sex…_ sex. It was fun. I’m allowed fun. Fuck you guys. You all thought I had a crush on him anyway.”

“We didn’t think you’d act on it!” Sierra replies, her brows rising. “And if you did... not like this.”

“All I’m saying is,” Michael grumbles, shifting back on his feet and finally drawing himself away from Luke’s side, walking back across the few feet to Sierra and Crystal with his arms folded, “when I see this guy, there’s nothing stopping me from knocking his teeth out of his head.”

“But without his dentures, how’s he going to graffiti Luke’s neck? You can’t leave hickeys like that with your gums,” Crystal points out as Michael ends up beside her, knocking their hips together, and Luke glares at her. 

“So he got carried away.” Luke sniffs, wiping at his nose. He can’t think of much else to do but declare, “I’m a good lay, I’ll say it. Makes sense that he would.”

“See, now that’s not true.” Sierra points a finger at him, tilting her head. “Remember summer before sophomore year? When you were dating that last guy, Jason, and he broke up with you because you wouldn’t—”

“Too much information!” Luke shouts, a vein popping out in his neck, and Sierra laughs loud enough that she has to hold her stomach. Luke’s tone has gone shrill. “You promised you’d never tell anyone about that!”

“Okay, now I need to know,” Crystal says, directed to Sierra. “What won’t Luke do in bed? Was it something like choking or—”

“No!” Michael has his hands plastered over his ears, rapidly shaking his head and letting out a long screeching sound. “I’ve heard too much about Luke’s sex life tonight. I’ve already pictured him getting rawed by some stupid theatre bitch reciting Shakespeare while pounding him, saying shit like ‘ah your ass is as tight as tulip buds in the winter;’ I don’t need—”

Luke flips on him, mouth falling open, and his cheeks flushing for the millionth time, all the blood in his body rising to his face as he shrieks, “It was not like that!”

“So what was it like?” Sierra asks, batting her eyelashes, faux innocence leaking from her every pore. “Did he tell you he was going to ‘cometh now’?”

“I need to leave,” Luke says, rubbing his blushing cheeks; he can hear Crystal laughing. “I can’t be around you people anymore. I’m going on a walk to clear my head. I hate you all.”

They think he’s joking, and he sort of is, but not really, and they don’t stop laughing with each other, even when he is out the door into the cement hallway, the echoes of their laughter trapped behind the dorm door.

It keeps ringing in his ears after he’s halfway across campus.

***

Luke is trampling horsemint as he makes his way back across campus, fuming and festering in his own organs, mind rolling over itself as he tries to figure out what the hell he’s going to do with this all.

He wanted his friends to think he and Ashton had sex, yes, but not _hate_ sex. What was he thinking, letting Ashton give him a hickey? Especially one that looks like _that_.

His palm flies to the mark while thinking about it, hovering over the bruised skin. 

Granted, he’s not sure how much of it he outright regrets, considering that simply feeling the mark beneath his fingers is enough to make a shiver roll down his spine; thinking of how Ashton’s body felt behind him, warm and hard, tongue and teeth on his neck, hot breath against his skin. 

He shakes his head. 

What the hell is he doing to himself? Not a full month ago, he couldn’t stand to be in the same room with the man, and now suddenly he’s getting chills thinking of Ashton’s hands and mouth on him? He has to be out of his Goddamn mind.

Maybe Mike was right. 

‘Corrupted’ seems to be the operative word.

***

When Ashton opens the door, he is wearing the same clothes he was wearing when Luke left an hour ago—his heavy black hoodie and worn jeans—but his hair is messier now and his eyes are droopier like he’s recently woken up.

It’s not even six p.m.; the fact that he would be sleeping seems absurd.

His hazel eyes widen upon sight of Luke and he exclaims, leaning back from the doorframe, the exhaustion slipping from his features, “Hemmings! Back so soon; you miss me that much?”

“Is Calum here?” Luke demands, charging past Ashton and into the dorm. 

“Oh no, come right on in; no trouble at all,” Ashton mutters, closing the door behind him. He glances up as Luke frantically checks the surrounding rooms, calling, “He’s still out. Says he’s spending the night at Roy’s, which is code for he’s spending the weekend at Roy’s and is going to come back on Monday hungover and well-fucked. M’jealous. Y’know, on account that I’m not allowed to fuck anyone while you and I are—”

Luke turns back around, walking forward with long strides as he shoves his collar aside to expose the purple and blue mark on his shoulder and upon sight of it, Ashton doesn’t even have the decency to try and hide his grin. 

Luke demands, gesturing to the bruise, “what the fuck is this?”

Ashton glances up at him, smiling wider. “D’you have short-term memory loss or something? It’s a hickey. I gave it to you not two hours ago. Do you need to see a doctor?”

“It’s a fucking—” Luke can’t even get the words out, he’s so flustered— “hate sex hickey!”

Ashton takes one long blink as if his thoughts are moving in slow motion. He says, steadily, “It’s a hookup hickey.”

“Is there a difference?” Luke snips. 

“I don’t hate you,” Ashton replies, tucking his hands into his front pockets, “if that’s what you’re insinuating.”

“You gave me a hickey—“ Luke draws a circle in the air around the bruise so Ashton knows what he’s talking about— “like you were trying to devour me. My friends are horrified.”

Ashton snorts. “If I was trying to _devour_ you, that hickey would have been left if in a very different place.”

“Don’t try to be funny right now,” Luke says, but he can’t deny the way his skin prickles at the words, fixing his shirt back over the bruise. Or, fixing _Ashton_ ’s shirt back over the bruise, and mussing his hair up with one hand. “This is serious. It’s completely derailed our whole ‘be a convincing couple’ plans. Now my friends think this is some one-time, high altitude fuck.”

“You’re overreacting.” Ashton scoffs. “I gave you a normal hickey.”

“You gave me a hickey like you were _fucking_ me.” Luke swallows, darting his eyes away. “ _Hard_.”

Ashton’s lips quirk into a subtle smirk at that, as if he enjoys the way Luke lowered his voice on the words, as if they’re something scandalous, which they _are_. “Uh-huh? Felt that was… how it was supposed to be, no?”

“No!” Luke shoots his eyes back. “That is not the kind of sex we were supposed to have. Because that’s not the kind of sex _I_ have!”

“It’s the kind I do.” 

Ashton is getting a real kick out of this, making it obvious by the way his dimples are deepening and the corners of his eyes are crinkling. Having a grand old fucking time and Luke considers hating him again, just for this. 

“Listen, I don’t know about you, Hemmings,” Ashton says, “but I have good sex. I have dirty, gasping, make-you-see-stars sex. And, if I’d made it accurate for you, I would have told you to hobble back to your dorm because fuck knows that after a night with me, you wouldn’t be walking in a straight line.”

The words flood into Luke’s ears, the gravelly manner in which Ashton has said them, and subsequently, a massive pit has opened up in Luke’s stomach. 

A deep, consuming sort of pit that almost feels like hunger but not quite. Something similar and, yet, something different. It’s a rawer feeling—a more primal version of starvation—and Luke can’t help but think to himself, in the tiniest recesses of his brain, that he’s never had sex like that. 

He forms the words, his stomach growling without sound or hunger, “you have one-night-stand sex.”

Ashton shrugs. “If the shoe fits.”

“I—” Luke breaks off, pressing his fingers into his temples. Curls of golden hair lace his knuckles. “I’m sure that’s worked out great for you in the past, Ash—”

“It has.”

Luke glares at him. “If we’re gonna fake date, that’s not the kind of sex we can have… or, you know, trick people into thinking we have. Because people who ‘love’ each other—can’t help but remind you that the whole point of this is faking _love_ —don’t fuck each other like this hickey insinuates you fucked me. Y’understand that?”

Ashton sighs, running a hand back through his hair and stopping to massage his temples with a gentle touch. Luke wants to kick himself for thinking about how long his fingers are. “Okay, well, that definition of love sounds boring as shit.”

“It’s not, number one,” Luke says, raising a finger. “And, number two, now my friends think that you’re some fuck-boy who’s ruining my innocence so, in the future, let’s leave nice hickeys, shall we? The sort that, uh, _don’t_ make my roommates gasp in horror.”

Ashton’s smirk turns into this coy smile as his eyes trace up to Luke’s face, hands drifting away from his face. “Didn’t realize we were planning on me leaving more.”

“Why is it that I’m trying to make a genuine point here, and you’re making jokes?” Luke asks, his stomach turning in a knot, the pit flipping upside down and back over. “Take this seriously. I’m not a one-night stand kind of guy, Ash. In no world. I’ve never fucking had one. Ever.”

“Never? Now that’s depressing.” Ashton raises his brows. “Never ever?” 

“No.” Luke swallows. Should he be embarrassed about this? He feels embarrassed. “Never ever.”

Ashton sways back on his heels, letting out a low whistle. “Geez. You never wanted to? Not even once?”

“Of course not,” Luke replies, and he believes that. One-night stands are unclean. They’re lazy and fake and pointless. “There’s nothing real about that. It’s so… It’s gross.”

“So, let me get this straight. You’ve _never_ gone to a bar, met some pretty bastard, and dragged them back home to fuck? Really get down and dirty? Try things you haven’t before? Just have a good time because you know you never have to see them again?” Ashton’s hazel eyes glint. “You never wanted to do things without the feelings? Feelings make things so messy.”

“No,” Luke answers. Because he hasn’t.

He’s never wanted to drag some pretty bastard home from a bar and fuck, even if it is what Ashton is describing. 

Even if it would be one moment without the pressure of performance, or love, or a morning after. Even if it was ‘no strings attached’ which does sound sort of relaxing… Even if it sounds to Luke like it’s similar to the high of being on stage. One moment of rushing adrenaline, body reacting on its own how it wants, every nerve quivering, sweat prickling hairlines, as loud as you can, begging, spotlight on you— 

No. He doesn’t want that.

“I don’t even fuck on the first date,” he carries on, his thoughts now lost in themselves, everything beginning to hop down that rabbit hole in his subconscious, as the pit in his stomach complains that it’s getting hungrier and hungrier but Luke doesn’t know what to feed it with. “I’m a wait-until-at-least-a-few-weeks-in type. Maybe more. It depends on the guy. There was that one time, yeah, with Kyle but he bought us the most expensive wine on the menu at this crazy-ass restaurant—his dad was in oil or something—so I had sex the first date for him. But I blame the wine for that one.”

“And?” Ashton’s smile is built on humor like he’s close to laughing. “What happened with Kyle?”

“I dated him for the next nine months,” Luke answers, fingers raking through his hair. 

“Ah, of course.” Ashton dips his head. “For the baby.”

Luke chokes on a laugh, surprised by the joke, and he says in a scoff, “Shut the fuck up!”

Ashton starts to chuckle himself but Luke needs him to understand why he came here. He came here with a purpose; why does Ashton have to keep distracting him with those hazel eyes and his stupid, dirty humor and descriptions of one-time, whatever-you-want, no-expectation sex?

“I’m not a cum and dump, okay?” Luke claims and Ashton’s smile falters, as though he’s startled Luke would say a thing like that. 

Ashton’s voice is gentler. “I didn’t say you were.”

“I don’t do one-night stands; fake relationships or no.” Luke gives him a stern inspection with light blue eyes and that’s enough to make Ashton quiet down for the time being, pursing his lips together. “Which means I don’t have the hookups and… one time shit, no matter how good it is. And I don’t have the… the rough, sweaty—” 

_Dirty, gasping, make-you-see-stars—_

“Whatever-the-fuck-you-said-it-was sex.” Luke sniffs, shifting on his feet, his stomach churning. He says, clearly, “I actually know how to love.”

“Okay,” Ashton deadpans. He doesn’t appear hurt by the proclamation. “I don’t.”

Luke wants to scream at him and he digs his hands into his hair. “Then why did you think this was a good idea!”

“Because acting!” Ashton replies emphatically. “I learn how to act like I’m in love for the scene; you learn how to be realistic and believable and how to loosen the fuck up. Y’know, get that stick out of your ass and replace it with something that’s a bit more pleasurable. It’s the best of both worlds!”

“Oh my God,” Luke whispers, both his hands sinking into golden curls and tugging at them. “We’re in way too fucking deep. Holy shit.”

“If you want to quit so bad, we can,” Ashton offers, tone lower.

“No!” Luke blurts, perhaps too fast, and he wonders why he was so quick to the jump. “We can’t now! My friends already think I’m a whore with a hard-on for my scene partner. I can’t make them think I’m a one-time whore! The next four months would be miserable for us; I’d never hear the end of it. We’re going through with this. We just have to make up for the initial setback.”

Ashton regards him through those hazel eyes that make it hard to focus. “And we do that by…?”

“By you—” Luke dips his head to him— “being an extra fucking good boyfriend around them. Like… award-winning type boyfriend. I want romance, chivalry, all of it. You’ve definitely gotta convince Michael that you’re not fucking me for fun.”

“Then you’ve gotta convince my friends that you’re not turning me into a full-on family man,” Ashton replies, rolling his sleeves up. “I have a reputation to uphold.”

Yeah, a reputation of fucking people into oblivion once before moving on, and stealing leading roles in plays he doesn’t deserve. Hell of a reputation.

“So… we love each other, supposedly,” Luke sounds out on his tongue, hugging himself, “and we’re sweet on each other most of the time but, you’re saying, every once in a while it has to be implied that—”

“We have rough, hot as fuck sex that makes you shake,” Ashton fills in with a casual shrug. As if it’s such a casual thing. Although, for someone like Ashton, it is. 

Luke’s stomach crawls over itself inside him and the pit opens deeper, starving. His throat is dry. “Right. Yeah. Sounds good.”

Ashton’s voice is low, on the halfway point between a sneer and a giggle and Luke doesn’t know what to do with that when Ashton asks, “So, they think I fucked you good, huh?”

“I wouldn’t brag about it,” Luke responds, scratching at the side of his head, and his stomach is roiling. “Michael’s ready to knock your teeth out.”

“He’s not the first.” Ashton snorts, a hint of some unhidden satisfaction to the way he grins crookedly at Luke. “And he won’t be the last either.”

“And you’re proud of that?”

Ashton shrugs, jutting his bottom lip out. “I’m realistic about it. It is what it is. Not like I’m the sort of guy you bring home to your parents. But it’s not like I want to be either.”

“Yeah, you made that one abundantly clear,” Luke mutters, walking to the living room portion of the dorm to deposit himself on Ashton’s comfortable couch, his hands working into his hair to massage his scalp and hopefully the fading headache out of his brain. “If my _brothers_ saw this hickey? Jesus Christ. I can’t imagine. You’d be dead before you hit the ground.”

Ashton follows him to the couch but doesn’t sit, instead loitering on the other side of the coffee table with his head tilted to the side like some labrador, hands stuffed into his pockets but his jeans are tight enough that Luke can see the way his fingers are flexing through the fabric. 

He says, “I didn’t know you had brothers.”

“That’s because you don’t know anything about me,” Luke replies, and he props his elbow upon the arm of the couch so he can rest his head in his hand and blink up at Ashton through his eyelashes. 

“I know you like pigeon blue and Frank Ocean,” Ashton protests and Luke chuckles.

“Nice try.” He massages at his chin; he needs to shave. “But it’s periwinkle.”

“Dammit!” Ashton hisses and it makes Luke laugh in full, smiling at him happily because, yeah… Yeah, sure, Ashton’s cute. 

He has fluffy curls, after all, and shiny eyes, and these deep dimples that press into his cheeks when his smile widens, and even if he makes terrible, dirty jokes and is not the sort of person any self-respecting human being would fall in love with, Luke thinks he’s cute. 

He’s allowed to think he’s cute. 

“How many brothers do you have?” Ashton asks when Luke’s laughter has faded back into his chest.

“Two,” Luke answers. “Ben and Jack. They’re both a lot older than me.”

“The baby of the family,” Ashton choruses, swaying on his heels. “Why doesn’t that surprise me in the slightest?”

“I bet you’re an only child,” Luke decides and he can’t hold back the confounded expression when Ashton shakes his head in response. 

“Nope. Oldest.” Ashton’s hands are repositioning themselves in his pockets like he’s nervous. But his face doesn’t hold any apprehension so maybe Luke’s imagining it. He may simply be the sort of guy who can’t stand still for too long. Luke doesn't know him well enough yet to know either way. 

If they’re going to fake date; Luke needs to start finding things out about this man. Fill the pages of his ‘Scene 14’ notebook with Ashton’s favorite foods, shows, sports, family members. The worst part of that is, Luke wants to know. Every thought that’s ever occupied Ashton’s head, every dream, every worry; Luke wants to know them. 

And that concerns him.

“I’ve got a sister and a brother, Lauren and Harry,” Ashton says. “They’re a lot younger than me though.”

“Really?” Luke’s bewilderment is genuine. “Wow. Are you close with them?”

“Yeah. I played ‘Dad’ for about ten years.” Ashton shrugs and he moves from where he is standing at the coffee table to walk to the kitchen. Luke doesn't know what he’s planning on doing and, by the looks of it, Ashton doesn’t know either. “But I don’t see them much.”

“Why not?” Luke wonders, watching as Ashton takes a hand out of his pocket to trace it over the counter like he’s examining it for dust, which there is none.

Ashton peers over the countertop. “Uh, not a great deal of time. They don’t live around here and travel is expensive and stuff. Lots’a reasons. Do you see your family a lot?”

Luke ponders. “Not as much as I’d like to, but enough. I can only stand so long with Ben and Jack. They’re fucking mean.”

Ashton sends him a pout from where he’s lingering at the counter. “Aw, poor baby. Getting bullied by his big brothers. Need someone to come save you from all that tyranny, angel?”

“Don’t be rude.” 

Luke grabs a throw pillow off the couch and chucks it at Ashton’s head, who dodges it with ease (on account of Luke being such a shit shot) and it ends up smacking the fridge mutely instead before thunking onto the floor. 

Ashton glances back at it, gasping in offense when he turns to Luke, touching his chest. “You could have killed me.”

“Don’t tempt me,” Luke replies and Ashton cackles as he moves to pick up the fallen pillow. 

He says as he does, “good thing I won’t have to meet your brothers in all this then. Sounds like they’d scare me”

“They’d beat your ass,” Luke informs.

“And I’m very protective of my ass.” Ashton hugs the pillow to his stomach as he stands up, carrying it like it’s a baby. 

“One of your best features,” Luke agrees which earns him a hard snort as Ashton walks back over so he can toss the pillow on the couch. 

He asks when the pillow hits the cushions, “didn’t we agree to not objectify each other?”

“If I remember correctly,” Luke returns, picking the pillow up himself, “I was the one who asked not to be objectified. Which you completely ignored, by the way. You told me it was acceptable for me to objectify _you_.”

“I probably did tell you that,” Ashton admits, falling down onto the couch beside Luke, only a few inches away. He sinks blissfully into the deep cushions, plucking the pillow from Luke’s lap (who protests in a whine which Ashton also ignores) so he can hold it against his stomach again, resting his arms over it. “But when you look like this… Objectivity is no object.”

Luke slaps him in the arm. “You’re a narcissist.”

“This is true.” Ashton peeks at Luke from the corner of his eyes and there’s a subtle frown to his lips, not unhappy by any stretch, but it’s one that expresses curiosity and perhaps a level of worry. “Hey, can I ask, uh—Why did they go straight to ‘hate’ sex?”

“Huh?” Luke looks at him, startled. 

“Your friends,” Ashton fills in, adjusting the pillow into a hug, “you said they went straight to hate sex after they saw the hickey and I’m wondering… I mean, why hate sex? They could have said, like, rough sex or kinky sex or something like that so I’m wondering why they said _hate_ sex.”

Luke stares at him, rooted to the spot in the couch cushions. His mouth has dropped open and he knows he looks like a fucking idiot but he doesn’t know what to say about that. He stammers, “uh, well, they—We—”

How does he tell Ashton he hates him? He doesn't hate him _now_ , obviously, even if Ashton’s confidence and self-comfort are still—to a certain level—anger-inducing. (Not to mention the way Luke’s hair stands up whenever Ashton makes a sexual comment or alludes to anything intimate with Luke). 

He’s come to realize in the last few weeks that Ashton isn’t horrible. He’s funny and he’s cute and he’s fucking infuriating but in an endearing type of way. 

How does he explain that to the man himself?

Ashton gives him a questioning look and Luke knows he needs to spit it out because if he doesn’t find out from Luke, Michael’s going to tell him or Sierra or Crystal or anyone that has talked to Luke in the last year. He hasn’t been very good at hiding it. 

“I—” Luke swallows audibly. “Ash, listen—and I can’t express enough that this isn’t the case anymore—I kind of went through a phase where I, maybe a teeny tiny bit, hated you with every fiber of my being.”

He expects Ashton to be hurt, or offended, or to do something indicating that he hadn’t known. What he does not in any world expect is for Ashton to shoot forward, stabbing a pointer finger in Luke’s direction and exclaim, “So you admit it!” 

Luke reels back against the arm of the couch. “ _What_?”

“I fucking knew it,” Ashton says, his entire demeanor having changed and Luke doesn’t know where the hell this came from and he knows the astounded expression on his face displays that perfectly. 

“H-how did you—” Luke shakes his head, flummoxed— “Wait, did you just fucking lull me into the security of a bonding moment so that you could trick me into admitting that I used to hate you?”

“You’re Goddamn right I did,” Ashton replies, grinning, and Luke lets out a strangled, disbelieving laugh. 

“I don’t hate you anymore!” Luke tries, stressed. “So don’t be offended or anything.”

“Offended?” That makes Ashton giggle, hugging his pillow. “I’m not offended.”

Luke pauses. “You’re not?” 

“Oh, hell no.” Ashton reclines back into the sofa to get more comfortable, patting the pillow resting on his stomach. “I always figured you did. I mean, you don’t have a great poker face, Hemmings, I’ll be honest. I could literally _feel_ you glaring at me in class. I was trying to figure it out there for a while; I thought maybe I slept with your boyfriend or something and you held a grudge.”

“And you didn’t ask me about it the moment we became partners?” Luke interrogates. His eyes have grown twice their size and he can’t believe what he’s hearing. Ashton _knew_ that he hated him? How fucking embarrassing is that?

Ashton rolls his eyes. “Oh yeah, that would’ve been a great opener. ‘Hey, man, guess we’re partners now and have to do this scene where we’re intense lovers and one of us is dying of AIDs. By the way, I’ve gotten the vibes that you want to choke me out—and not in a sexy way—what’s the deal with that?’ That would have gotten our friendship off to a great start. Real bang-up idea there, Hemmings.”

Luke fumbles, poking Ashton in the arm with his fingers (and, despite his better judgment, taking note of the firm muscles that hide beneath the skin). “What, and you think offering to fake-date me was a _better_ opener?”

Ashton opens his mouth to retort before he pauses, seeming to realize Luke has a point and he rubs at his chin awkwardly. “Never thought of it that way.” 

Luke lets out a rough sigh, throwing his head back against the couch and placing a hand over his eyes so the world is engulfed in spotty black for a few silent, serene moments. “I can’t believe you knew I hated you and your solution was to give me coffee and ask to imaginary date me.”

“It worked, didn’t it?” Ashton offers, laughter in the words. “You don’t hate me now. Mission accomplished!”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t celebrate yet. The jury’s still out on that one,” Luke replies but he peeks at Ashton through the gaps in his fingers with a smile and Ashton is smiling right back at him, hugging the pillow to his stomach, his hazel eyes crinkling at the corners and dimples curving his cheeks. 

He is so fucking _cute_ that it’s antagonizing.

Which is a valid observation; Luke is allowed to think that. He really is. It’s not as though he’s going to capitalize on that thought, or anything, and get any sort of feelings for this man. 

No one in their right mind would fall in love with Ashton Irwin. Luke knows that. 

Granted… he’s never been in his right mind before.

***

He returns home around nine p.m. and he unlocks the door with his own key instead of knocking, worried that his friends will make a fuss of him coming home late after disappearing.

When he opens the door, however, no one is there waiting for him with missing posters or pitchforks and the lights are off. 

He frowns, flicking on the switch beside the door to bathe the living area in light.

“You’re back.”

Luke jumps about two feet in his skin, flipping to find Crystal sitting on the couch with a book balanced in her lap, and she turns up to look at him lazily, grey eyes half-lidded. 

“What the fuck?” Luke hisses, glancing around. “Were you reading in the dark?”

Crystal marks her page and places the book beside her. “I was using the lamp.”

To prove it, she leans over to the lamp on the small dresser beside the couch to flip it off. 

She focuses back on him, crossing one leg over the other and resting her folded hands on her knees. She would look very professional if she weren’t wearing the shortest, tightest pajama bottoms known to man and one of Michael’s jackets, the sleeves too long for her and covering half her hands in sweater paws. 

Her face keeps the sincerity, however, and that makes the rest of her look just as intimidating, booty shorts or no.

“Why were you sitting there in the dark like a Bond villain?” Luke asks, easing himself into the room. 

“We need to talk. Sit,” she commands and Luke doesn’t care if it’s exactly what a dog would do, he’s worried (and pretty intimidated), so he walks to the pillow on the other side of the coffee table and does as he’s told. 

She regards him coolly.

“Am—” he looks around like there are snipers hiding behind the doors and in the vents— “Where’s Mike?”

“He’s asleep,” she answers.

“It’s nine p.m.,” Luke mumbles, looking back at her. 

She shrugs. “I tired him out.”

Luke makes a face of disgust at that implication because _for real_? He does not want to hear about that. Crystal and Michael are way too open about their sex lives. And, to think; they got onto him for having a fucking hickey. The hypocrisy of it all. 

“I’m onto you,” she says like it’s so simple, and that makes Luke’s heart plummet into his stomach. 

He falters. “Uh—”

“The shirt was one thing,” Crystal expands, her eyes stuck on him, not giving him any leeway to escape or protest, “and the hickey was another. Separately, I may have believed it. Together? You’re forgetful, Luke, you’re not brainless.”

Luke can’t breathe. Oh God. Oh no. He’s been figured out before the scheme even began. He’s such a terrible fucking actor. This is all his fault. Oh God. 

Crystal bobs her head to the door. “So you had dinner with Ashton tonight?”

“Y-yeah,” Luke answers because it’s true, he did. It hadn’t been a big deal or anything; Ashton had heated up some leftovers and they had poked fun at each other while they ate, standing at the kitchen divider, talking about their siblings.

What assholes Ben and Jack are to Luke. What sweethearts Harry and Lauren are to Ashton. How jealous Luke is that they’re nice. How jealous Ashton is that Luke gets to _see_ his siblings. 

Crystal frowns at him, intertwining her fingers together. “I don’t understand why you didn’t tell us outright.”

Fuck. Here it comes.

“I know,” Luke says, distraught, putting his head in his hands. “I feel terrible about it. I mean, the fact that I—”

“It took me a bit to piece it together,” she explains, interrupting him, “but I knew the hickey thing wasn’t like you. You don’t do hook-ups like that once.”

“I know, I know.” Luke nods. Why had he agreed to the hickey scheme? It’s ruined everything and now he’s going to look like such a loser. 

“You could have said you were seeing him, Luke. We would have understood,” Crystal says with a sigh, as though she’s sympathetic for him, eyebrows drawn up and gaze kind. Like she’s doing him such a favor by saying it outright. What a saint. “Listen, I know that you haven’t dated anyone for a long time because you were all focused on ‘the craft’ or whatever, but it’s okay to want someone. You didn’t need to lie to us because you felt guilty about being with him.”

Luke is staring at her. A voice in the back of his head whispers, _wait, what? Could you say that one more time because it sounds like you think—_

“I’ll tell you though—” She lets out a laugh— “you don’t give yourself enough credit as an actor. You had us going there for a while.”

“I-I did?” Luke asks, playing with his fingers in his lap. 

“We all genuinely thought you hated him,” Crystal says and Luke can’t believe what he’s hearing. There’s no way that she… That she thinks… “But I get that you were trying to keep yourself safe. It’s scary; liking someone after you’ve said you’re not going to be in a relationship for a while. When I started dating Mike, I was the same way. But, if it’s time, then it’s time. And there’s no shame in that.”

Luke can barely form the words. His thoughts are tumbling around his head, bouncing off the walls of his brain and crashing into one another. “Wow… Crys… that was some… How did you get all that so easily? I thought for sure I wasn’t that readable.”

His heart is pounding in his ears and he’s drumming his fingers against his knees beneath the table out of sight. There’s a smile hiding behind his face waiting to get loose. The moment she looks away, he is going to smile so fucking big.

She shrugs, humble about her genius discovery. “Once I sat down and thought about it… it was so obvious that you were trying to tell us but didn’t want to say it outright. I knew you wouldn’t do that on the first time with someone—it’s not your style—and it all became so apparent, the more I thought about it. Being so adamant that you hated him because you were trying to convince yourself not to get into this, self-sabotage to expose yourself… It’s classic.” 

“Yeah.” Luke nods, rolling his lips together. He’s almost offended she thinks he couldn’t pull off a secret relationship, but this is what he wants so he’s not going to dwell on that. “You hit it on the nose, Crys.”

“So?” She scoots forward on the couch. “How long has it been going on?”

Luke lets out a breath and he doesn’t even fucking know what compels him to say, “I got a crush on him during _Bright Star_. And we uh… we kissed opening night.” 

Crystal lets out a small gasp, a hand flying to her mouth. 

“But, I’d sworn off relationships, y’know,” Luke continues on, lying through his fucking teeth, and yet somehow it’s flowing so easily off his tongue, “so I told Ash that we couldn’t do anything about our… _spark_ … and he said that it was okay. Wrong place, wrong time; it happens. We didn’t have any classes together, and he didn’t have a lot of free time, and there was no way for us to even do anything about it. And that was the end of it. But then…”

“You became scene partners,” Crystal fills in for him, awed, her hands resting beneath her chin, eyes big like she’s listening to a bedtime story.. “Oh my God, Luke. Oh my _God_.”

“Don’t tell Mike yet,” Luke implores, because he needs to check with Ashton again before he tells anything to Michael and he needs to update his ‘Scene 14’ journal and he also needs to slap himself in the face for saying that. Letting Crystal make up a story is one thing, telling _Michael_ is another. “I’m trying to figure out the right way to tell him. It’s so new, y’know? Me and Ash’ve been building up to this forever.”

(Two weeks.)

“Yeah, yeah, obviously.” Crystal nods, miming zipping her lips and throwing away the key into the far corner of the dorm. “Your secret’s safe with me, Luke. Always.”

He thanks her aloud, so kind and quiet so that only the two of them can hear it, the words traveling the length between them but no further, and he’s biting back the biggest smile the entire time because, _wow_. Fucking wow. 

It has begun. 

How sweet of Crystal to keep his secret. If only she knew she was keeping the wrong one.

**Author's Note:**

> If you have any questions, threats, and/or comments, feel free to take them to my [Tumblr](https://daydadahlias.tumblr.com/). 
> 
> Thanks for reading and hope you have a lovely day, doll!  
> 


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